


The 704

by ketherphorbia



Series: The Uptake [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abduction, Androids, Bingeing, Biopunk, Body Horror, Chemicals, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Eating Disorders, Elephant's Foot, Epiphany, Excretions, Filipino Character, Force-Feeding, Gen, Incest, Junkyard - Freeform, Latino Character, M/M, Medical Examination, Metahumans, Multi, Mutants, Necrophilia, Pica Bingeing, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Teratophilia, pica disorder, radiation poisoning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 07:09:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22492090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketherphorbia/pseuds/ketherphorbia
Summary: In 2050, slums termed stalkers’ quarters locally commodify e-waste; but, not only obsolete technology gets dumped at ground level in skyward-sweeping metro-cities. Galen Miner, a stalker in Tri-City, New Jersey, suffers an accident in a toxic waste dumping site the day after Christmas, only for increasingly bizarre developments to transpire.
Series: The Uptake [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618225
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	1. 1|0|0|-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Epiphany approaches, Galen tries to go about family life as normal. Dr. Bell insisted the sequelae of Galen’s accident wholly stem from PTSD, but Galen's not so sure.

Sitting against the living room baseboards strung with homemade construction paper papel picado garland, Galen picked at the inert Walkman in his hands. The seventeen-year-old Pinoy-American dug his fingernails into the seams between the case and where the buttons attached, and every so often he depressed or released the ‘play’ button. He turned it about in his hands. It lacked earbuds, and batteries, and even its battery compartment panel. With no music, he couldn’t quite detach enough to drown out the neighbors’ drunken singing down the hall, or the old movie his father and oldest brother watched.

Click. He looked to the clock in the corner of their large thin wall-mounted television. 20:47. Almost nine. The woman in the film played the piano. Click-click scrape. Something about knives? Blades, yeah. Time transpired around him like drifting fog, passing him, excluding him. Click- click- click _click_ –

_“I don’t know if it’s me, or Tyrell’s niece…”_

Their father, Dolom, sat forward with a grunt and nabbed the remote off the coffee table. Torber, the eldest child, observed Dolom’s movements with semi-detachment, half-absorbed in the film.

“S’almost nine. Y’gonna get y’coats on or what?” Dolom wore a close-shorn horseshoe of hair from sideburn to sideburn. He leaned over the back of the couch with an authoritative glance for the three youngest of his children, who persisted in nonsense under the family’s small but intricately adorned Christmas tree. The set flickered off and Torber sat up straight with a stiff, tired sigh. “Set’s off. We goin’.”

“Come on!!” Orpi gesticulated dramatically in agreement with their dad.

The middle child at fourteen, he behaved as though denied dinner by his younger two siblings’ absorption in scrutinizing the wrapped packages already beneath the tree–and as though his curiosity in their meddling hadn’t made him complicit in the first place. Long since poised to leave, he already had on his purple-yoked white windbreaker.

The youngest at six, Ruti glared at Orpi in stern silence with arms crossed. Zipped up to his chin in a lavender plush down coat, and wearing thick gloves, clearly Orpi had directed his complaints mostly at the tactical mastermind: their sister.

“We heard Dad just fine, twip.” Vana rolled her eyes at Orpi as she squirmed into her magenta pea coat.

The nine year old girl ignored him and flipped her scarf around her neck a few times. In light grey overalls and a dark turtleneck, she was the only one of the children without some fashion of undercut, instead porting nothing but square-cut bangs that hung in pigtails in front of both ears.

Galen stood while the younger siblings bickered over culpability, and zipped up his dark grey jacket. Everyone retrieved their boots from beside the front door. He left the Walkman in the floor where he’d been sitting.

They all slipped on their cold weather gloves and headed out of the apartment building. Within blocks of the industrial buildings repurposed as complexes for the stalkers who worked the Tri-City Quarter, the entire ambiance changed from residential to commercial. Even the air tasted different, shifting from metallic to vaguely smoggy. Neon washes, from holiday-themed advertisements projected on the smooth uniform surfaces of concrete stores, painted the mixture of mostly stalker foot traffic with different bright colors from all angles. _Two days until Epiphany!_ Interspersed with billboard-rented surfaces boasting all kinds of products, dozens of establishments broadcast that they stocked this year’s must-have gift: the Cube Neon, the latest update to multimedia formatting, and all the accessories conceivable for storing and customizing them. The ice slush leftover from the Christmas blizzard dampened the streets, and the drifts of icy gutter grime absorbed multiple rim lighting just as the pedestrians. Occasionally, the advertisements would dance festively to dazzle people’s attention, and would wish them a _Happy Epiphany_ in a dozen languages. The higher the stacked skyscrapers loomed above them, the more uniform a pale green the glow became. No one could really see all the way to the top levels, and no one really tried.

The eldest brother Torber rounded back to slouch an arm across Galen’s shoulder while they walked. With his free hand, the goateed brother adjusted his knit green hat, not missing a step. As the children sped off about twenty yards ahead of them and Dolom, Torber slipped Galen his cell phone and whispered in his ear:

“Try textin’ her again.”

Galen flustered at the offer, but nodded and unfolded the device to peck out a short message with both thumbs. He’d lost his own cell in the accident, and had gone without it for over week now. He couldn’t tell if he’d lost all contact with his girlfriend, since she hadn’t once responded to texts from Torber’s number. He still couldn’t brave going to Ame in person after what happened. When he lost patience waiting for a response, he slipped the phone back in the side pocket of his elder brother’s jacket and slouched his hands into his own pockets.

“Y’all need t’quit it with the stuff under the tree,” Dolom told the children, who’d rounded back nearer them by then.

“Hey!” Ruti tugged at his father’s jacket with a frown. “We didn’t do nothin’!”

“Patience already. Can’t y’all wait two days?”

The father laughed warmly. Galen stretched his shoulders back in a strained yawn, and tucked his long undercut back out of his face before mumbling:

“…Vana always figures out what’s in it without even openin’ it anyway…”

“Hehe.” Vana marched proudly at hearing her genius acknowledged.

“Y’slowpokes! I’m starvin’!”

Orpi had run across the snow-clotted street and held the one restaurant’s door open to holler to his family with a cupped hand to his face. The two children sped across the street, and the two elder brothers and their father conceded to moving a bit faster. Once all six of them were inside, the hostess escorted them all back to a round side booth, and they piled in as she set out their menus and wrapped napkins.

It was Santo’s Diner again. Inexpensive and familiar. Dolom commonly brought his family to this same restaurant, just outside Quarter limits. The younger, pickier eaters seemed to like the food well enough. Though street food carts ran at all hours in the commercial district of Level One, many stalkers frequented 24-hour restaurants like Santo’s and The Lighthouse, if not just to have a place to sit indoors and eat.

Galen eyed his menu. _Double bacon cheeseburger. Grilled chicken club. Deluxe chili fries. Spaghetti. Garden salad. Pancakes._ To him, none of it looked or even sounded like food, and the presentation of the dishes’ photographs enticed him more than the dishes themselves. _Bound in glossy laminate. Bright red heat-sealed vinyl edges._ He shook his head of it. None of it really felt like it was food anymore. Not after what happened the day after Christmas.

“Earth t’Galen!” The remark startled Galen, and Orpi clicked his tongue at his brother and sneered with sarcastic eyebrows. “Slaggin’ space cadet.”

“I–”

“Orpi!” Torber snipped, pointing at him. “Check y’self, man. You’d be weird, too, if–”

The server returned to take orders, silencing contention briefly. She asked around the table. When it came to Galen, he let the menu’s design make his choice of dinner for him, settling on fries and a double cheeseburger.

Once the waiter retrieved the menus and walked away, Galen resigned to the gravity of the past week. A half-formed worry drowned him, that this dizzying half-conscious state would become permanent. His detached glance followed each member of his family in turn, and he wondered what they would do without his contributions to their collective income, if it came to it. Had his moment of rash stupidity doomed his family to an even more dire straits? What illnesses his symptoms might foreshadow did not concern him, only what ramifications threatened those dearest him. Dolom would undoubtedly ensure his children ate, even if that meant he ate less, and Torber would inevitably do the same. In his deadened state, he almost didn’t catch himself from uttering it, but he still thought it all the same.

_Mom would know what to do._

The clatter of melamine on laminated pressboard snapped Galen from his stupor. His apathy for eating dulled him to the arrival of hot food. The whole family knew Galen hadn’t been quite right since the accident, but they all assumed the illness was mental not physical, even Galen. Even the doctor who’d seen him had assured the Miners that Galen suffered purely psychological symptoms, byproducts of post-traumatic stress. Dr. Bell had sworn Galen’s vitals came back normal. But then again, because he couldn’t convince himself the sureness of his memory, Galen hadn’t told any of them–the doctor, or his family–what he thought had actually happened. Besides, they already had enough on their plates.

Galen sat there a moment too long, vacant gaze upon his meal as he tried not to remember the day after Christmas. Orpi took the opportunity to jab at him again with a sneer, leaning in to whisper in Galen’s ear.

“That _is_ what y’ordered, y’know, twerp.”

Galen ripped the cellophane-decorated toothpick out of the bun with a trembling hand and grimaced at his younger brother, then flicked it down to snatch up the burger and take a bite of it in his face.

“Shh– ssh’up! I’m not a twerp.” He chewed a bit. “Twerp.”

“Knock it off an’ eat.” Dolom grumped sternly to quieten the two boys, fidgeting with his side salad. “Y’both twerps.”

“Yes Dad,” they both loused. The table returned to silence.

To quash the chances of his siblings making further mention of him, Galen finished his food quietly and too quickly, despite how it nauseated him to eat at all. The first to be done eating, his thoughts again beset him into isolation while his siblings and father picked at their food.

A vacant stare fell upon his flatware. Soon Galen noticed himself salivating at the way the utensils caught the fluorescent diner lighting. A lump formed in his throat, and he calmly folded the napkin over them to keep himself from looking at them. Instead, he focused on Vana and Ruti to his left, between him and Torber, who had split a rosca de reyes for dinner. The two children had taken huge slices of the king cake, intended to be split for dessert between at least four people, and Vana split into peals of laughter while Ruti mashed his apart looking for the tiny plastic baby.

Those chemicals had definitely done something to his brain. Blurred his definition of food. The night before, swallowing the batteries from the TV remote had calmed his mind. More than the batteries had beguiled his eye in the past few days. Taking notice of these different attractions to objects was like collecting pieces to a puzzle he didn’t want to finish. He considered these appetites his body’s way of quickening a slow death by poisoning and obstructed digestive tract. The line of thought wouldn’t quit him.

“Aight y’all, stop makin’ a mess.” Dolom reached across the table and nabbed the other half of the spiced twist-cake, to serve himself a slice. “An’ eat y’scrambled eggs.”

Torber requested a slice himself, and he nursed on it while he finished off his breakfast sampler. He noticed Ruti’s slice of cake had in fact produced the baby, and chuckled. No longer excited by the activity now that he’d found it, Ruti set the small plastic treasure by his drink, and ate his dinner as as instructed. No one noticed Galen staring at the small novelty choking hazard.

“Ha, Ruti.” Their dad grinned. “You found the baby. That means you’re king tonight!”

Ruti frowned a moment, then grinned even bigger.

“I say everybody gets more cake!”

Galen sneaked the king cake baby and fidgeted with it under the table. His eyes flicked side to side. Shakily, he popped it in his mouth and pressed it to the roof of his mouth. He waited until he could be confident no one saw it, and hid swallowing it. For a while, everything felt more calm, nearly normal.

After the meal, everyone got up to put their coats back on. Ruti climbed under the table and Vana crouched to investigate. Galen knew exactly the issue and used the distraction to pocket his folded-up flatware unnoticed.

“You lost baby Jesus?” Vana bumped his foot with her own. “Ya got two days to find him!!”

“Come on, y’all.” Torber stifled laughter in a smile. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It probably got knocked under the booth,” Dolom agreed. “Y’all were so rambunctious. Remind me not t’let y’all have sugar for dinner again.”

The two of them frowned wide-eyed and took to either side of him.

“Thank you, Dad,” they insisted in unison. He patted them both on the head with a smile, and took their hands in each of his on the way out.

The family ate late often, and as usual, everyone retired shortly after returning home. Everyone brushed their teeth and laid down. Once Galen could tell he was the last one still awake, he sat up on the floor mattress, and by the light of the single line of Christmas lights around the ceiling molding of the kids’ room, he fished what he’d stolen out of his pants on the floor beside the bedding. He unfolded the napkin and glared dully at the three objects in his hands, lost in the multicolored reflection of the pressed metal. Though the thought haunted him, of these things inside him, he could not shake the compulsion.

The spoon came first, he decided, likely do the least damage. The handle lingered on his tongue, the metal tang steeling his composure to follow through. He could not stomach the understanding that the shape and taste of such things granted a psychological comfort, and rather than locking himself in the act longer than necessary, he pushed onward. His throat straightened as his afflicted gaze hit the ceiling. He pushed the spoon down with a thumb, and he didn’t gag as he easily swallowed it, despite its awkward shape. He stifled a relieved sigh.

A moment imparted the reality of his actions, and he quickly moved on to the knife. It wasn’t a steak knife, but he didn’t let himself form relief of it, and simply swallowed it unassisted with two swallows sliding it down. It felt too natural, and the slight drag of the dull serration had given it a satisfying texture.

He put off the fork until last. With clenched teeth and a grimace, his stomach churned now. Hesitant, the prong end went to his mouth, and he sucked on it in an attempt to find comfort in the aesthetic of the utensil without having to ingest it. He could somehow in his mind excuse the knife and spoon to what he considered a mere psychological hunger, but he couldn’t push past the conviction that he _needed_ to eat the fork. He traced it with his tongue. Four tines, bent slightly out of keen from a dozen too many times through a commercial dishwasher. He pulled his pursed lips over them and over. Eventually he pulled it away and turned it around, to swallow it handle-first.

He took in the aftermath in silence. His fingers twisted up in the fabric of his tank top. His insides frothed. Terror rang his ears. He thought for certain he’d be able to palpate the utensils inside him. He dug in with his fingertips in increasing panic. Upset breathing ran tandem behind him to his own, and he froze.

Either Torber hadn’t fallen asleep, or had been awakened by the feat. He couldn’t have not seen. The elder brother recoiled as though he’d caught Galen doing something no human should have seen.

“Wh– what’re you _doin’_ –?”

Galen moved to hush Torber, and grabbed him by the arm to drag him into the bathroom between the two bedrooms in the apartment. With the door locked and fan on, both understood to speak at a whisper.

“–Y’can’t tell anybody, ‘Nite.”

“I– I won’t.” Torber could only stare in paranoia, backed up against the door. He still couldn’t convince himself Galen had had _food_.

“Promise me.”

A shaky nod.

“S. Ss. ‘Specially not Dad.”

Another nod, less shaky.

“S’not safe t’eat at home. Y’know that.”

A cold sweat ran down Galen’s nape, at hearing _that_ had been Torber’s initial concern. The air quality made it unsafe to leave food out in the residential section of the Quarter, the risk of ingesting particulate matter too great. So, stalkers saved on groceries, home appliances, and cooking time, and ate in the commercial district instead. Deliberating the complications of honesty at length, he finally corrected Torber.

“Wasn’t food.”

“Then wh–”

“–My utensils from dinner.”

Torber couldn’t process the admission. The act served no logical purpose, without an audience for shock value.

“Th– That the only thing y’eaten… like that? How… long?”

“Just since the drift collapsed on me. I, I mean it.”

“Y’need t’go back t’Bell, man. Th– that stuff’s gonna rip up y’insides.”

“I… I, I, I, I’m fine–”

“No. No. Y’ain’t fine, Gale.” Torber gripped him by the shoulders and locked their gazes. “Y’just ate a knife, fork, an’ spoon. _I seen it, an’ you confirmed I did._ An’ y’just fessed y’eaten _other things_. It’s a wonder y’ain’t keeled over by now. S’been, what, six days since I found you _buck naked an’ half-frozen_ in that lot, and we took ya t’the Clinic an’ brought y’home?” The look he gave Galen begged him to be all right.

“…Eaten thirteen batteries, a lightbulb, a pair a earbuds, an’ now a… a ss, set a flatware.” He hoped desperately that explicit frankness would spell out the severity for Torber, despite no overt symptoms of illness or complication otherwise. Taking his own rattling poorly, he instead joked: “Why they call ‘em bulbs anyway? Ain’t round.”

“ _Slaggit_ – No wonder y’shamblin’ around like a zombie–! Y’poisonin’ y’self– _Why_ –”

“I… I can’t help it, Torb.” He couldn’t look at him. “I see somethin’, my brain fixates on it, won’t shut up about it. Not ‘til I eat it. But what my brain’s tellin’ me t’eat now ain’t the part scares me.” A certain panic built between them as Galen struggled to form the words. “My stomach’s… really _dissolvin’_ the things I swallow. …Y’seen me eat those utensils. They already gone.” He stooped effortlessly to touch his feet to prove nothing stabbed him internally, and eye contact ensured Torber knew the demonstration’s purpose. “The burger kinda gave me a stomachache, t’be honest…” If the line of conversation had especially disturbed Galen, he certainly didn’t show it until he’d blurted out that last part, and he began to shake.

Torber took a step back.

“What… what _happened_ in that lot…?”

The elder brother didn’t realize Galen himself might not even know.

“Th, those drums wasn’t empty. The ones’t fell on me.” He eyed the toothbrush holder as his stomach churned afresh. “I think what was in ‘em… I think… I think I _drowned_ , ‘Nite. All I remember’s bein’ trapped under all that stuff, an’ tryin’ t’get a breath but breathin’ in _liquid_ instead. It… it was all gone by the time y’all dug me out, s’nobody knew. I couldn’t tell anybody. Couldn’t. Couldn’t talk about it.” He fought not to hyperventilate. “It _did_ things to me, man. More'n just nightmares every night.”

Something broke in Galen in his struggle against recalling the hallucinations that came with the internment in deep-packed snow and toxic waste that lasted the longest four days of his life. His toothbrush vanished from the cup which held everyone’s, to the same fate as the utensils minutes prior. Then went the box of floss, tweezers, and a few pumps of waterless hand soap directly into his mouth.

“It’s… gettin’ worse. The hunger pains.”

A comb. The handle of a razor. The disposable blade-head, too. A bottle of prescription medication.

Torber seized him, unable to handle his brother falling apart like this.

“Stop!! Stop it–!”

Snapped out of his hunger attack, Galen choked up a little and patted his chest. A burp came shortly after, and the strong fume of plastic overwhelmed his nostrils.

“Slag. Can’t help myself!” A mad look possessed him, and he mirrored his brother’s grip on him. Why the fuck had he told him? Now he’d seen him eat in clear unmistakable light, right in front of him! “Promise me y’won’t tell anybody! Y– y’can’t!”

“…You… Y’don’t look so good.”

Galen shook him, trembling, on the verge of tears.

“Promise! Me!!”

“I promise!”

Through tears, the both of them choked down their fear and nausea over the situation. Galen put down the the toilet cover to sit.

“I’m worried about you,” Torber said. “This cannot end well.”

“Don’t have t’tell me. S’all I been able t’think about since it started.”

Beyond uncomfortable, Torber tried to quash the conversation.

“It’s late, man. We should get some rest. One more day before ‘Piphany.”

Money. It always came down to money, didn’t it. Galen tried to smile a bit, and nodded.

“…Yeah, we should.”

As Torber unlocked the door, Galen grabbed his shoulder.

“One more thing, though.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

The remark cut an awkwardly long silence before the two returned to the mattress they shared in the cramped bedroom space. They both hoped the other three on the other side of the room had not noticed anything that had just happened.

In the morning, Galen tied up the bathroom before anyone else rose. Dolom knocked on the door, but had to speak over the volume of the ventilation fan.

“I gotta shave,” he reminded, as his way of ensuring everyone could get into the bathroom before they went their separate ways for the morning. “Y’gonna be much longer?”

“G, gimme a sec–”

Dolom stood firm outside the door in waiting. He heard a flush, then bottled water splashed at the sink. Galen eventually exited without a word, leaving on the fan in slouching shame. A skin-crawling snarl messed up Dolom’s face as he turned to watch his son walk off back to the kids’ bedroom.

“Slag did you _eat_?”

The question went unanswered.

A bit of clatter took place, and the house could hear Dolom mumbling to himself while searching for something.

“Anybody know what happened to my razor?”

Torber’s eyes shot wide at hearing confirmation he hadn’t dreamt last night’s events. He turned over and shot Galen a wild, concerned look from across the room, where the younger of the two dressed for the day. Galen could feel the stare and shrank even further in self-consciousness.

“I got no idea, Dad,” Torber fielded, uncomfortable with the one-sided conversation taking place. “Y’sure y–”

“–I was lookin’ for somethin’ for my stomach. I knocked it off the counter an’ it broke.” Fatigue stitched Galen’s voice as the compulsion to finally admit to it formed in response to someone trying to cover it up. “It broke in a way can’t be fixed. Chunked it.”

“Gale, those things are five creds,” came the conditioned chastise despite it explained away as an accident.

“I’ll buy you a new one. Sorry.”

Dolom had noticed other things missing in his search for the razor, but said nothing more.

 _What did you eat?_ though. The phrase ate Torber alive. He knew exactly what Galen had eaten. His bare feet hit the frosty low-pile carpet and he walked over to where Galen dressed, to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Did you?”

The Miners loitered at a street truck for breakfast, then the two youngest saw off the four eldest before returning to the apartment to watch themselves for the day. The four of them trekked off to the stalking yards for one last dive before the community’s true Christmas celebration: the Feast of the Epiphany. Orpi went to shadow Dolom, while Torber insisted on sticking with Galen for the day. Galen and Torber walked down further to a different lot, and Galen didn’t make eye contact as they put on their visor-goggles and respirators.

“Y’know y’don’t gotta keep an eye on me.”

“Abandon I don’t.”

Torber’s comment met an eye roll and a grunt.

“Whatever. Let’s just make a productive day of it, yeah?”

Mere hours before they arrived, dumping had laid out a fresh layer of e-waste discards in the particular yard they’d chosen to hit. Torber gave his brother space, insisting only on occasional supervision as each scaled a different drift to work. Other stalkers soon attended the yard as well, and the silicon grindstone sucked all noses flush. A few hours in, Torber had scrounged up a few heavy-solder circuit boards, and a dead car battery for drain and salvage. The elder brother checked in on Galen around noon. He found him crouched behind a large CRT TV with his respirator and visor-goggles off, shoving gloved handfuls of junk in his mouth. The instant Galen noticed he’d been found out, he froze and glared at his brother. Until that moment, Torber hadn’t paid much mind to the dark circles under his brother’s bloodshot eyes.

Torber’s knitted brow and slowly dropping jaw destroyed Galen.

“Sh’up.”

“You– y’told me I didn’t hafta keep an eye on you.” Torber only received a sustained glare in response, and Galen resuming eating anyway. “ _D’y’even know what y’shovelin’?_ ”

Galen turned the material in his mouth at the moment around with his tongue, and glanced upward thoughtfully.

“Mostly silicon, I’m guessin’. Lotta PVC, too. An’ I can taste copper– wires– an’… I think… some battery acid–”

“–Sh –knock it off.” Torber was shaking. “Admit this bothers you.”

Galen shoved another sarcastic mouthful of junk in his mouth, and spoke through the particulate.

“Course it bothers me. Got any bright ideas? I only got one, an’ I don’t like it.” Torber shook his head, slow and terrified. “What I thought.” Galen swallowed the mouthful. “What’d you find today, anyway? Anything good?”

“F– found a car battery, an’ a few real old motherboards. The boards’re probably fifteen, twenty years old. Real thick circuits.” Torber welcomed the sudden subject change.

“Chouay. …I, I dug out this ol’ clunkuva TV, an’… took a break. All the components’re still there. Cadre’ll have a heyday with it. Help me carry it down the drift s’we can start breakin’ it down t’haul off?” He coughed on something that had gone down the wrong way, and bits of debris flew from his mouth.

“…Sure.” Torber knew better than to comment on it.

The two brothers knocked off about four hours later. They packed up bags of components they’d collected and left behind the discarded shells of the technology they’d deconstructed. They had enough to justify renting a flatbed cart to lug it the few blocks down the way, to unload at the sorters’ cadre. Based on the age of the circuitry they’d harvested and the kinds of metals typically used in that decade, the day had been generous–especially with the TV screen old enough to have radioactive components. It relieved Torber to notice Galen had put back on his goggles and respirator as they worked on amassing their finds to haul off. He didn’t like approximating the respirator to a muzzle, and didn’t like to think Galen might have sneaked anything under it when he wasn’t looking, but at least they both could focus on a shared task through most of the afternoon. As they walked home, Torber couldn’t shake the question of just how much Galen might have eaten from their treasures.

Dolom and Orpi beat the family’s other two trufflers home, and were playing with the kids when they came in.

“Any luck?” the father asked them. “I mostly found casin’ an’ giftwrap garbage.”

Not waiting for tomorrow, Torber handed him a cred card in response.

“ _Aguinaldo_. What we hauled to cadre today had five pounds’a alloy. Card’s worth thirty, Dad.”

The whole living room went silent in admiring awe.

“Y’can get a new razor.” Galen didn’t want to bring it up again, but still felt bad.

“Slag the razor. This means everybody can get some new clothes. Vana’s growin’ crazy like a weed, an’ I don’t remember last time anybody got new pants.” He looked squarely up at the boys from where he sat in the floor. “Y’did good today. Gonna be a damn chouay ‘Piphany.”

Dinner at The Lighthouse went by rather uneventfully. Galen even seemed to snap back to his old self, despite declining tamales and pozole. Instead, he ordered only a side of fries, and though no one else really took note of it, Torber saw through the attempt to disguise a lack of appetite.

After dinner, Galen was right back in the bathroom. Torber could overhear retching when he put an ear to the door. He wondered if what Galen had eaten in the yards that day had finally caught up with him, or if he was puking up the fries in particular. Considering how much of a recovery he appeared to have made up until dinner– He couldn’t believe the train of thought he was on, and rejected it.

Everyone went to bed without getting to brush their teeth. Torber did his best to diffuse their father’s worry, by swearing Galen had been like this all day, and had probably just eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. Such an explanation only raised more questions, though Dolom didn’t mention them and left it to his sons to sort out. Torber lurked at the bathroom door until Galen came back out, and he made sure Galen was comfortable in bed, with a bottle of water, before getting into bed himself.

Torber heard their father get up around midnight to sneak a few extra gifts under the tree, and he smiled to himself, finally drifting off. About two in the morning, Torber turned over to not find Galen. He checked and the bathroom was free. When he checked the living room, the Christmas tree was knocked over, unplugged, and missing half its ornaments, and the closet had been ransacked. The family had lined up their boots at the base of the tree rather than the front door, to receive trinkets. Galen’s were missing, as well as his backpack from the bedroom.

The eldest brother simply stood dumbstruck in the dark, pained at the thought Galen had run off, on Epiphany no less. He quickly convinced himself from the state of the tree, and the absence of toys in everyone’s shoes, that he’d just gone to… eat… and failed to reassure himself that he’d return by morning.

But, he didn’t.


	2. 1|0|1|-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicidal ideations, needles, smoking, pica-bingeing, abduction.
> 
> To a breaking point, Galen’s increasingly convinced he didn’t survive the accident.

Mostly alone in a stalking yard, Galen huddled in the shadow of a drift heap. All but a few trufflers remained at home to celebrate the holiday, and Galen easily hid from the few he encountered. Too, he appreciated that it had finally warmed above thirty degrees that morning. Sufficiently burrowed up under a sturdy drift, he unceremoniously pulled down his respirator around his neck, and produced his e-cig from the lanyard under his shirt. He depressed the button on the side to take a drag off it, and reflected on his behavior back at the apartment. He despised the total loss of control that had driven him to eat ornaments off the tree like unreal fruit, and unravel an entire string of lights off the tree to swallow it. He could only find solace in the reminder that he managed to get a hold of himself after glutting on the treats in the family’s boots, and that he hadn’t destroyed anyone’s specially-addressed wrapped gifts.

Still, the family could only have construed that kind of aftermath a few ways.

When the texture of the mouthpiece changed, he noticed he’d left the e-cig in his mouth while lost in thought. Removing the device from his mouth, thin melted strings drew off his lips. He squirmed, eyes wide. Out of compulsion he licked at his lips, and scraped off the residue with his front teeth. His nostrils imparted a mused, panicky breath as he ran his tongue over his teeth and stared at the partially disfigured e-cig.

Confused loathing aside, it only crushed him more to see it ruined in such a way. They’d found him naked where the tumbling drums had trapped him. The chemicals had melted away all evidence save his body and the spontaneous entire meters of snow. The device had only survived the accident from the dumb luck that he’d put it in his backpack for safekeeping and tucked the bag someplace hidden, before he’d tried to climb to where he’d fallen from and taken the whole haystack with him. The same with his Walkman, another survivor which his appetite had also dismantled soon after. Still practically brand new, he’d given himself the e-cig as a birthday present the year before. He only used it when he sneaked off alone, as part of a ritualistic attempt to dismantle his anxiety-depression. Even in the moderation Galen practiced, most Quarter folks considered sin taxables like smoking excessively selfish more than anything else.

He noticed that vapors hadn’t intermingled in his previous breath, and paired with what his saliva had wrought of the e-cig itself, he doubted he’d even taken in a fraction of the nicotine intended per inhalation from the now-defective comfort object. Frantic at the perception, he scooped up handful after gloved handful of the drift, and sifted frenetically through everything he put his hands on, to sort out and put in his mouth anything small enough, with little concern for the content or composition. In addition to the variety of small electronics commonplace to the upgrade dumping phase of the winter season, a mixture of characteristic Christmas present wrapping and various smaller toys often endeared as ‘stocking stuffers’ intermingled with the freshest top coat of the drift. Ribbons, plastic action figures, broken technological casing, busted cubes, brain teasers, the works–Galen shoved it all into his mouth, without the mind to linger on what he ingested, let alone chew it.

The longer he let his compulsions run unabated, the less he believed solely that anxiety, or the hunger independent of it, fueled the frenzy. Whatever perpetuated the snowballing desperation could not find what it sought in this drift. In trying to pinpoint his exact craving, he personified the hunger, distanced himself from it. It wasn’t him, craving these things. It was his stomach. Its hunger. He’d broken something inside himself, and his hunger sought to right it. But, it was all so wrong. How could bingeing solve anything? Locked in half-lucid terror, he could not process his fears–only power through the motions. He at least had the trifling forethought to tuck the e-cig lanyard back under his shirt so it didn’t get lost, before going straight into the side of the crumbling drift to eat with his face.

Nothing quieted the cavernous hunger. Trenchant and pathetic, the echoes deafened, only driving the decibels inside his head to implacability. Eventually he laid a hand on a box that halted him. Slowly, shakily, he pulled it up close to his face so he could inspect it with the half-light of the shaded cave he’d tunneled into the drift. Somehow, finding a chemistry set in the stalking yards felt ironic, nearly quaint. Opening it revealed only two vials missing. He tilted the box this way and that, watching in a dull hypnotism as the liquids and bottled powders shifted. It didn’t take long before he unscrewed the lids from each specimen and downed their contents like shots. With every addition, the aggression of the fumes and froth in his throat intensified and the flavors in his throat changed; and, unhindered despite this, he almost continued right back to eating the drift. He downed the the bottles, implements, samples of metal shavings, and any packaging that would fit in his mouth… and then the tightness in his throat throttled him to a halt.

This was it, wasn’t it. He hadn’t wanted to be right. Just as his appetites had found the technological survivors of the accident and done them in all the same, these compulsions sought to finish what the chemicals had started. Soon his throat closed up on him, and he clutched at his rapidly swelling neck. In total opposition to a survival instinct, he kicked himself further back into the drift as to cave it in on himself. No one could see him like this. Shoving his shoulders hard into what lay piled up behind him collapsed the whole thing. Somehow the total darkness calmed him, the claustrophobia familiar. The top layer of the drift still did not crush him, in the merit of not having packed down densely atop him. The cave-in had left an (un)fortunate air pocket of sorts.

Everything shrank, constricted. He couldn’t tell how much of the moisture on his face was tears or leakage from the strata of garbage he’d so recklessly disturbed. Something in that chemistry set reacted with his body, in that set explicitly, not anything he’d indiscriminately eaten prior, was still reacting. He knew it. Soon he could hear his clothing succumbing to the swelling, and he thanked being spared the sight of such a thing by the grace of absence of the light by which to see it. But in what state would they find his body? His head rang, and ultimately he could feel little else save resignation, tormented by the tactile imagery of the bulging masses swelling up all over his neck and armpits. Relief of finality washed over him as he let himself slip unconscious.

He next noticed how the moisture clung to him. Dark. Humid. Heavy. Sulfurous. His head swam so thick he couldn’t get his bearings to even guarantee his spatial relationship with gravity. Reaching out he met resistance, and closing his hand around the solid, crinkly darkness, he understood stalking yard debris surrounded him. Was he dead? After his recollection of what he’d done, he couldn’t fathom any other explanation. Surely, it couldn’t be anything short of half-right. He picked a direction and burrowed, so the drift might eventually surrender him. When he breached the layers of garbage, the contrast of light physically pained him, and he scooted himself back in his self-made tunnel a ways so his eyes might adjust.

No, he wasn’t dead. He strained to understand what had taken place. He vividly recalled the choking and tightness, as his gloved hand absently traced his jawline down to his collarbones and sternum. He looked down when his fingers tangled in a large hole in the fabric of his shirt. Inspecting the tattered shirt he found the collar and armpits of his jacket had also been rent apart.

He did his best not to linger on the recollection of that swelling sensation.

Galen mustered the will to disinter himself in full; and, though a few stalkers in the yard noticed him, they did not get involved since he did not appear injured or unsteady. Had he been aware of them, he would have appreciated their indifference from involvement. His hoary hair clung to his face, and his breath shrank from the cold, producing no fog. He probably smelled worse than he looked, he thought. He let out a weak laugh.

Ambling out of the yard and starting down the street, the wind caught the moisture of his clothing and he could feel every hole the binge had torn, down to the leg portion of one of his calf-high utility boots and a good length of one side of his inseam. Somehow, the cold itself didn’t really bother him, despite it being ten degrees Fahrenheit at best. He only really noticed that it _was_ cold, more upset at feeling exposed. Though he very much disliked the thought of how much replacing the clothing would cost, a much greater distress plagued him.

The compulsion to eat no longer especially nettled him. Things around him looked and smelled appetizing, but the impulse to pursue them was now near-absent. He wondered if this were some affirmation he truly was dead. Either the urges of self-preservation had ceased, or the urges of self-destruction had succeeded. He embraced the notion of a disembodied state when passersby ignored him altogether despite his dishevelment. The heaviness, thickness, enervation kept his head from belonging to him, even less so than before he’d buried himself in the yard drift. Nothing had been right since his accident, but for as much as he’d inured himself to the weight of an impending void upon his shoulders, this felt different. The tension had been cut. How long _had_ he lain unconscious in the drift? The memories of what had just transpired escalated his terror enough to spur him in one specific direction.

But, if Galen showed up empty-handed, they’d turn him away unseen. He, like many stalkers, was loathe to deal with the Clinic, but what other option did he have? Whatever chemicals had drowned him had to have been verbot, evenmoreso than his act of trespassing into the dump site where they’d been left to rot. And who could know such things better than the Good Doctor?

To his recollection, he had only visited Bell a couple of times in his whole life, but he did know the common asking price for an exam: Kloranamine. He approached the first negotiator he encountered on the streets, and a quick but hesitant exchange of the tobacco cartridge from his now-useless e-cig landed a jar of the stuff in his hands. From there he simply had to get from the North end of Margate Street to ascend to Level 3 by high-volume lift. The last of his cred paid for a ten minute transit by bus to Level 5. He fidgeted absently with the then-empty card, and by the time he stepped off the bus he had swallowed it without noticing.

City limits began at Level 5, an even more stark contrast than the residential and commercial areas of the Level 1. Like the thirteenth floor on an elevator, Level 4 remained chiefly support architecture for everything that came above it; no high-volume lifts traveled between Levels 3 and 5. Tri-City’s denizens considered anything beneath this particular expansive concrete foundation a no-man’s land, a ceiling which sealed the Quarter in the South end away from the rest of the city. The neon veins of the thriving city pulsed even in the daylight, the shadows of the city above him requisite of a composite of halogen and Wolfram glow. The residential and commercial districts of the Quarter felt holographic by comparison. Too deep in the bowels of the metropolis for the concrete buildings to receive the solar excitation the postbrutalist architecture required to power its illumination, buildings within city limits instead retained their charge solely from the advertisements which flickered across their surfaces. Galen never could get used to the traffic up here, the handful of times he’d been up top. Vehicles only moved in the Quarter before daybreak, for dumping purposes; no stalker was a stranger to travel on foot or by bicycle. But the city crowded with all manner of cars, trucks, and buses, both by tread and by air.

Galen got vertigo just looking up into the city, especially within city limits. There was just… too much of it. Too much city. Too much… everything. In his school years he’d been told the skyscrapers of Tri-City–the fusion of Jersey City, Newark, and Elizabeth–reached beyond the mile-high point, but he reeled at the mere thought of it. Why not build outward? Why constantly build upward, on top of itself? Every few hundred vertical feet lay yet another foundation upon which a new level was erected. The stalker could only ever in his life feel like the Quarter was the city’s scar, and no amount of scabbing would seal it off out of the city’s mind for good.

Galen’s Quarter was enormous, sprawling, by comparison to many. Worse than the municipal landfills of the Twentieth Century, it came as no surprise that the entire metropolitan population would rather forget the Quarter even existed. Most fusion cities around the world had their own quarters, e-cycling hubs powered by stalkers with nerve enough to brave dealing with hazardous wastes on a daily basis. But, Tri-City’s was something special. It was _The_ Quarter. Tri-City sat on a state line, and received e-waste from most of New Jersey, and also New York City across the Hudson. And with that many players contributing to the pot, there came the guarantee the namesake professional _stalker_ could find just about anything that didn’t belong in a haystack of illicitly dumped wastes, even if a body wasn’t even trying.

The All’s Well Clinic resided on an acute corner, a stern, dull, and unwelcoming three-story façade. Galen entered without pause. He stood stony at the receptionist’s window and waited for the girl to acknowledge him. The Clinic saw all manner of Quarter misfortunes, but when the thirty-some lady finally picked her head of tight curls up from the program on the small Web screen at the corner of her desk, and caught the look in that wretched face, she very well could have seen a ghost.

“–I, what are you–”

He set the jar on the counter and pointed at the lock on the sliding glass. A gravelly, cracking tone belied his resolve, and he winced into his stutter.

“I’m here t’see Bell. It, it– it can’t wait.”

The window slid open and she took the Kloranamine from the sickly stalker, then quickly shut it again.

“He doin’ surgery right now, but ain’t nobody else waitin’ after he’s done.”

“How long.”

“Dunno.”

“Find out. An’ tell. T, t, t, t–” His jaw tightened in exasperation, eyes distant and unblinking. “T, tell him he gotta dead man walkin’. Nn, no jokes.”

She darted down the hallway at that. Moments later the electronic lock on the waiting room door chirped, and uneasy she emerged to escort him back to an exam room on the third floor. He took to the exam table as she closed the door behind them.

“–He finishin’ up, but I’m gonna get y’vitals down. What _happened_?”

“Died a week or two ago.”

She started to type it into her tablet-reader, but stopped short.

“Why didn’t y’come in then,” she snapped. His apparent derangement unsettled her.

“I did. Bell said I was just… _upset_. Things’ve got much worse since.”

“…I see.” She reached for the thermometer on the wall behind him, but he simply stared at her and didn’t move to make it easier for her. “Well?”

“You’d rather I didn’t.” He screwed up his face and grunted, unable to finger a coherent explanation. “What day y’say it was.”

“20th.”

His face slacked, slow to accept it.

“…Of January. Please say just January.”

“January, yeah. Y’said real certain of y’self two weeks, but y’wasn’t sure what day it is?”

“…I– Two weeks,” he uttered, crazy-eyed. “Y’not slaggin’ with me here.”

“What day y’think it was.”

The Clinic didn’t pay her enough to put up with _this_ interrupting her Web program.

“Seventh at most. –’Piphany already–” The longer the conversation went on, the more it pained him.

“Yeah…”

As she annotated his ranting as an acute memory blackout, and also his refusal to her taking diagnostics, a knock came at the door. A head of short, peppered chestnut brown hair peeked in. The Laotian doctor entered soon after, his aged heart-shaped face drawing slightly agape at recognizing the patient.

“You look like you’ve certainly felt better,” Bell remarked as he let himself in.

“He’s real upset, Sir. Trust you’ll have better luck with him’n me.”

She handed off the reader and excluded herself from anything further, to return to her Web drama.

After he closed the door again behind her, Bell took to the stool opposite Galen.

“Salammonica told me you feel like death.”

“I– Where do I even start? I just lost the last two weeks. Don’t, don’t feel dead. I _am_ dead.”

“I see.” Bell’s eyes narrowed to suppress sarcasm, and he moved to skim Salammonica’s notes on the reader. “You wouldn’t let her get your temperature and blood pressure?”

“N, nn, not so much won’t than can’t.”

After a pause, Bell retrieved the thermometer where the technician had failed, and he looked at Galen sternly.

“I can’t help you if you continue being so cryptic, Galen. Please tell me what you’ve been going through since I last saw you. Be specific. Detailed.”

Galen shifted uncomfortably, words difficult even when not pressured. Ultimately, the implement in the doctor’s hand jogged his tongue.

“For starters? You’d gotta get a new thermometer if y’used it.” He fished the empty e-cig out from under his ripped shirt, and slipped off the lanyard to hold the thing out for the doctor to inspect. “Look what my spit does t’plastic now, Doc.”

Bell took the cigarette from him and turned it in his hand, straining to grasp how mere saliva had so warped the plastic mouthpiece.

“Your saliva did this.”

“An’ that’s just the most recent part. That ain’t even the _weird_ stuff. I… I been eatin’… _things_. Things ain’t food.”

“Here.” Genuinely intrigued, Bell poised the thermometer for oral use. “Show me. I want to get your temperature, but I’m more interested in seeing the rate at which you’re implying this melting effect occurs.”

“Suit y’self.”

The thermometer produced a warped beeping sound in under a minute. As the doctor removed it, slow strings of plastic drew from Galen’s lips. The metal cap and latex probe cover had melted away completely, and the silicate components sluiced from the missing last third of the device. A black crust tinged the edges of what remained of the probe cover. As Bell stared at what used to be a thermometer, awed, Galen chewed at his bottom lip at length. His appetite hadn’t left for long.

“Ss, ssseein’ as I wrecked it, an’ it’s useless now, can I–”

“How aren’t you dead by now?”

The question came out less pointedly than it had been in Bell’s head. He doubted only briefly whether to hand over the junk, only reluctant in disbelief, and let Galen have it as further demonstration.

“Things that aren’t food. You’ve been ingesting plastic?”

Galen hesitated with the junk in hand, reminded of how it had gone last time to eat these kinds of things in front of another person. Anxiety and compulsion crawled along his back. Before he even had a conscious thought to follow through with eating it, he noticed he’d already long since done so, and fell distant with a hard swallow.

“Stomach acid’s stronger’n the spit. Eaten bigger. Eaten sharper. _Drank_ worse. Don’t know what’s happenin’ t’me. …Regular food makes me sick now…”

“And you believe your accident is the cause of it?”

“…Words in my mouth, maybe, but yeah. I didn’t mention it before, c–‘cause I was scared. Am scared. But… I don’t think those drums were empty.”

Bell didn’t like the sound of this whatsoever.

“What makes you think that? From the eyewitnesses, and the people who pulled you out, the lot was dry as a bone.”

“I… I dunno–”

“–Here, let me try the infrared thermometer.” Bell retrieved it from another room in the hallway and returned with it. He quickly waved it over Galen’s forehead and squinted, incredulous, at the results. “ _Twelve and a half–?_ ” He dismissed the device and put a bare back hand to Galen’s cheeks and forehead only to shake his head in concern. Galen had been indoors a good half hour by then. “Do you _feel_ cold?”

“…Not ‘specially, no.”

Galen didn’t understand what the number meant, but knew from the doctor’s confusion that it meant something was in fact genuinely wrong. Bell took his blood pressure as well, but didn’t even seem to write it down despite getting meticulous with annotating _something_ on the reader. The doctor rose from where he had leaned on the counter, and moved to exit the room.

“Bear with me a moment. I need to go get something.”

Left alone in the exam room with just the thoughts in his head, Galen soon skimmed for food. Too preoccupied combing all the drawers and cabinets for anything made of glass, plastic, or metal, anything small enough to swallow, he did not notice the doctor had been gone over twenty minutes. By the time Bell returned, the patient had ingested nearly everything from the entire case of disposable aural speculum covers to the bottle of iodine.

Bell caught him completely unaware upon return, and he did not return alone. Before Galen could process it, a pair of firm hands took hold of him from behind and a needle gun went to his neck.


	3. 2|2|3|W

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When medical professionals come up empty handed in attempts to help him, Galen is handed off to the care of a pair of industrial chemists.
> 
> TW: forcefeeding, emetophobia, medical diagnostics, needles, abusive dynamic

Galen came to in a small room with a polished concrete floor and walls and ceiling edges with simple recessed studio lighting. He attempted to roll over on his back. When the discovery of handcuffs halted him, he instead rolled onto his face to ease getting into a kneeling position. He pulled on the cuffs to guarantee they had been soundly clicked shut. He looked around the room. Whoever had brought him here had removed his tattered attire and clothed him in a dark tank top and pajama pants.

Fumbling to his bare feet, he found a locked heavy metal door in the middle of one wall, while the flimsy door in the corner led to a one-person bathroom. The layout of the room couldn’t manifest its current function at first glance. He kicked at the metal door trying to make some noise, but it didn’t get him anywhere, and it didn’t have any knob or handle anyway. He tried repeatedly to reach the cuffs to suck on them, but couldn’t manage to get his hands in his lap from behind him, and each time an exhausted derangement defeated him more and more. Eventually, he laid back down in the middle of the floor, and welcomed the cool of the concrete against his body.

He must have dozed off at some point, because two pair of dress shoes appeared in front of his face. He jerked back a ways with a hushed _slaggit!_ under his breath. They belonged to two clean-cut older men, one a good bit taller than the other.

“Sorry to startle you, Galen.” The taller one, brunet, crouched down nearer, and rested his arms on his sprawled knees. “And we’re sorry that you had to be brought here under such circumstances. Hopefully, we can help you.”

Galen gave them a wild, sarcastic look before the fatigue wiped the expression off his face. Still, he craved the cuffs.

“--I know y’all?”

“Oh, my, no.” The shorter one, with longish swept-back pepper-blond hair, adjusted his glasses by scrunching his nose a bit, and joined his colleague in crouching. “Confirm for us, if you would: You were in an accident recently? And you believe it was chemical in nature?”

“Forgive Lyst.” The taller one shot an annoyed glance at his colleague, then motioned at him. “This is James Lyst, and my name’s Daniel O’Donnell. He’s very... task oriented, to put it mildly. Try to be patient with him, if you can.”

“How do y’all know all this-- Bell.” The stalker deflated and slumped on the concrete, recalling how poorly the exam had gone. “Must be bad, if the Good Doc thought he had to toss me into somebody else’s care. I, I, I, I. I’m dead, yeah? Thought so. Y’all must be morticians, with my luck.”

His features sympathetic, O’Donnell’s nod turned into a shake of the head.

“We’re chemists. Well, a chemical engineer and a pharmacist. And we currently have you under supervision for the sequelae of your toxic waste exposure. Between access and the square footage to house it, our facility is better suited to accommodate whatever diagnostics we determine can assess your health.”

“It’s a momentous occasion, really,” Lyst continued with a grin of large teeth, in an affected lyricism which seemed typical of him. “A new class of metahuman. Really, you’re something special, Galen.”

Galen struggled to keep up.

“ _Meta_ human? My DNA’s all screwy now? This didn’t happen cause a street chems. This was a buncha drums a truck. They. They fell on me an’ broke an’ I was trapped to where I. I think I inhaled and swallowed a buncha it.” He flinched from trying to piece together details, and shoved down his tic as hard as he could. Something about these two felt more trustworthy and candid than Bell had, but he couldn’t place why. “If y’need me to remember the exact names of every thing that bust open an’ drowned me... you’re S.O.L. ‘cause I. I. --I wasn’t payin’ attention t’that kinda stuff at the time.”

Lyst and O’Donnell listened attentively, but it was Lyst who spoke up.

“You don’t need to remember all that right now. It’s quite all right. But yes, _metahuman_. I’d suspect you’d know what a _metahuman_ is through some knowledge of Ketonamil, considering its prevalence in casual Quarter use, or perhaps through the politics of hybrids, but based on our current knowledge of your predicament, we both doubt any of either related substance was present on site where the exposure took place. And although a number of different chemicals can induce metahumanity, in the history of the one we suspect... there haven’t been any who took exposure with such resilience as you have.”

Galen balked, increasingly nettled by the metal around his wrists.

“Wouldn’t call it _resilience_. --Are the handcuffs necessary? Course they are. Y’all had t’drug me to get me here. No tellin’ what my reaction could’a been. Forget it.”

“We’re to understand it’s for your own protection as well.” O’Donnell frowned. “You have compulsion troubles?”

“I get hungry. Brain’s slagged.” He turned over, away from them. “It’s... hard t’get comfortable. Not for the floor. ‘Cause the cuffs. ...Can I say somethin’ weird?”

“I’m sorry to hear the restraints are making comfort difficult. We’ll work on that. Are they on too tight? What’s on your mind?”

“...These handcuffs.” Galen jammed his tongue up in the roof of his mouth and squinted. “...Metal. I get y’all not trustin’ me, but can we maybe not do metal? S’not the cuffs hurt. S’that...”

“What is it? You can speak with us without consequence.”

“...S’makin’ me hungry. Don’t get how, but it’s like I, I, can smell ‘em. Metal’s been drivin’ me _loon_. An’ with my hands behind me. Sure y’got cameras in here or some truck. Couldn’t sleep, for tryin’ t’get at ‘em.”

“Fascinating...!” Lyst had to sit down at this. “It’s affected your sensory acuity as well?”

O’Donnell dismissed the callous commentary with a cough.

“Trying to sleep with a loud appetite can’t be working well for you.” He ignored his colleague. “We’re going to try to make this arrangement as easy on you as possible. I’ll look into it personally this afternoon.”

“You must be ravenous.” Lyst leaned in to coax Galen’s eye contact, without succeeding. “It’s been a while since you were brought here.”

“Don’t remember last time I wasn’t. Not since--”

“A healthy appetite isn’t always a bad thing.” He patted Galen’s shoulder. “What would you like us to bring you? Within reason, of course. Our budget won’t allow for steak dinners.”

Galen just lay there for a moment, in a double-take.

“I don’t get y’sense a humor. That was a joke right? He was jokin’?”

“We’ll get you whatever you like,” O’Donnell insisted, increasingly exasperated with Lyst. “Burger Block? Chick Digs? King Pho? A pizza?”

Another long silence.

“Y’too, then. Let’s get somethin’ crystal here. Last I tried t’eat _food_ , threw up. Out every end. Know y’all don’t wanna clean that up, an’ I ain’t inclined to it neither.”

“Do you remember the last thing you ate, out of curiosity?”

“A bottle a iodine. Buncha those lil’ funnel things the doc sticks in y’ear. I dunno, was a little stressed out at the Clinic.”

“Food, Galen. Not the compulsions. Stay with me here.”

The stalker let out a shrill bark, unmoving.

“Been _weeks_ since I ate _food_ , doc. ‘Fore ‘Piphany. Can we--” He fidgeted with his wrists and swallowed his saliva.

“Which of us has the smart sense of humor here again?” Lyst rolled his eyes.

“Y’think I’m slaggin’ y’all? Bring me Burger Block. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Can we, maybe--” More squirming.

“If not... food... then what? The offer still stands, to get you anything within reason.”

“--I want these slagGIN’ HANDCUFFS--”

Almost in tears, Galen rolled on his face and tugged at the cuffs until his wrists were raw. The two men scrambled to each take one upper arm in hand and steady the boy.

“Cool it, cool it.” O’Donnell made hushing noises as he fished the key out of his pocket. “Stop squirming and I can-- Here-- wait, that’s not--”

The instant the cuffs were off, Galen wrestled out of their grip and snatched the restraining tool from them. They vanished down his throat in a series of curled links, and he lay back and stared at the ceiling with mental clarity afterward, hands laced on his stomach. Despite having contended with the offending article, an odor still divided Galen’s attention.

The scientists failed to hide their alarm.

“...You’ve... certainly done that before,” Lyst commented.

“Told ya I wanted ‘em. Nah. If y’makin’ a point f’me not, not chewin’. Y’couldn’t chew metal neither.”

“To your understanding, do you digest it slower or the same? The metal?”

“...Faster, t’be fair. A lot fastern’ what I think makes any sense. Paint. That’s what I’m smellin’, fresh paint. I...”

Lyst and O’Donnell glanced to each other.

“The lobby was being renovated earlier this week. Do you... you want paint?” Lyst looked at O’Donnell again, making sure he’d heard Galen right. “How-- how is he able to--”

“You’re able to smell the fresh paint _upstairs_?”

“Y’just seen me swallow handcuffs. Wouldn’t be weird as that, bringin’ me a bucket a paint, yeah?”

“You see that look in his eye.” Lyst wagged a finger at the flightiness Galen couldn’t quite shove down. “He’s just as overwhelmed by this as we are.”

“James, shush. It’s our job to figure this out, not shrink him. Besides, don’t you think it’s fair for him to be confused and disoriented? Clearly this condition has altered his perception in some way.”

“I’m right here, y’know. ...Will y-- will y’bring it? A bucket? Or a coupla cans?”

“Will that tide you over? We won’t be coming back to check on you until tomorrow.”

Entertaining his own warping appetites felt ill-advised at best.

“Ss, somethin’ plastic, maybe? Dunno. Don’t think ahead to well with it, jus’ makes me wanna eat it all at once if I do. Y’all haven’t got any books, yeah? It’s... borin’ in here.”

O’Donnell smiled, and helped his colleague up as they both stood to leave.

“We’ll see what we can do.”

Before Galen knew it, he was alone with himself again, the inception of the commonality of intermittent solitude. He didn’t catch how the door worked.

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

A rough boot to the butt jolted Galen awake, and he rolled over in anticipation for a fight, but his fists and gaze stiffened where he lay in confusion when he saw a stranger joined him. The man pulled a folding chair across the concrete floor and unfolded it with a series of rusty creaks, purposefully generating nuisance, and he sat mere feet from Galen with a big paper bag with its top rolled over. Younger than the two scientists, he had long grey-blond hair with the top half pulled back, angular features, and a white neoprene jumpsuit. Galen could tell by smell alone the bag contained fast food. Burger Block. Queasy, his fists and face drooped.

The man set down a fountain drink to one side of him, and fished out a hamburger piled up with vegetables. He tore into it with a diligent politic, seemingly less for keeping it off his uniform and more for some obligation to etiquette. After a few bites, once he was sure Galen had thought he was ignoring him, he jammed the burger right under his nose with a curious brow.

“--I, what, no.”

Galen moved to squirm away, but from where he sat the man pinned him down by the inner thigh with one foot. The man pressed down harder on Galen’s leg, until the treads of the boot dragged his flesh through the thin pajama pants. The stalker winced, and the man offered again by holding it there.

“I, I, I, I, I, I--” Galen swallowed, trying not to tremble. "--Can’t eat that.”

The man sat up straight and pulled off the bun to glance coolly back and forth between the bun and toppings.

“Educated guess whether you were a mustard or pink sauce kind of dreg.” He put the sandwich back together and took another bite. “Couldn’t exactly _take your order,_ you know.”

“Are you... with those two guys from before? Lyst an’ O’Donnell?”

“You could say that.” The man shoved the food against Galen’s mouth this time, smearing mustard at the corner of the stalker’s mouth as he sustained unblinking eye contact. “If you don’t eat, going hungry will be the least of your worries.”

Galen grabbed him by the wrists, and the man allowed it.

“I, ii, if you were with those guys, you’d know s’got nothin’ t’do with whether I like mus--”

The man had only let Galen talk to get his mouth open, and jammed the burger in, even once the rest met Galen’s gnashed teeth. The mixture of bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, and mustard elicited the same revulsion as a wad of hair in his mouth. With Galen caught off guard, the man pulled one hand away easily and used it to steady the shaven backside of Galen’s head so he could continue forcing more burger. Galen’s hands flew up to pry the salty oil and veggies away from his face, but it did little good save scatter a bit of lettuce.

“Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Stop being difficult. Didn’t anybody teach you how to eat? Don’t make me help you the entire way. I don’t get paid enough to babysit.”

Galen could smell the man’s holstered gun through the assault of fast food smells right under his nose, and opted not to argue. But these mutations, if that’s what was really going on... they’d given him such trouble stomaching anything... Still, it couldn’t be worse to resume being bathroom-ridden, than to second-guess the man’s disposition. So, he swallowed. He pulled the burger out of the man’s hands and shoved the whole thing in his mouth, and after the same level of mental preparation as taking a large pill, he swallowed whole what was left of it, just to get it over with.

Feigning he wasn’t shaking at the display, the man unstuck by letting go and offering up the soda.

“Supposin’ I can’t just say no thanks.” Without objecting beyond that, Galen popped the lid and used it to skim the ice as he chugged down the soda. He withheld comment as to the rising temperature in his gut. He ate the straw to satisfy his spite, and roll-folded the lid into his mouth too. “Don’t get what y’want.”

Rather than answer verbally, the man produced his reader from his breast pocket, and pointed in demonstration to the tiny, brightly colored cubes visible in the clear tray door on the edge of it. Heavy-lidded and matter-of-fact, he opened a recording on one of the cubes, and it lit up a pale green when he began playback.

_“--Y’think I’m slaggin’ y’all? Bring me Burger Block. Don’t say I d--”_

The man played it back a few times, watching contentedly as the look on Galen’s face melted from physical displeasure to disoriented grief. Galen wasn’t used to hearing his own voice, and it didn’t even click at first that it was his. Why the hell did this guy have a recording of Galen? His head ran hot and cold at once, and sweat wrought him clammy all over. Then it registered for the stalker, that this guy likely had a recording of the entire conversation he’d had with the scientists earlier. A scientist jealous of hearing of his rivals’ new work in progress? A security guard seemed the more likely explanation, but it felt like too simple of one to explain potential motives for this behavior. The more his stomach churned, the less he could focus.

Eventually, the whole thing spilled out across the floor in a charred effervescent mess. The man moved a foot aside to avoid the splatter, and his skin crawled to observe that the stomach acid actively dissolved the varnish of the polished concrete. His lip curled at the display to bare a gold incisor. He stood and pushed over the limp stalker with a small nudge, then retrieved the paper garbage to leave.

“You’re to follow all instructions to the letter. Nod if you hear me.”

A small nod, as Galen tried very hard to ignore the near-garlicky rancid stench of his stomach contents digesting the flooring beside him. He clutched his stomach, still cramping despite how much better he felt without the offending stuff inside him. Half-consciously, he felt grateful that it had come out before it had hit his intestines.

“That’s how you show gratitude for people going out of their way to extend a little kindness to you? That’s filthy, you know. Absolutely filthy.”

Galen nearly blurted out _well it’s your fault, I told you exactly what’d happen_. When he glanced up, he understood he’d have said it to no one: the man had already left.

“...I know.”

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

The door opened and shut, and a pair of shoes approached Galen, who’d curled up into one corner, lost in doldrums over the conviction that his family would not want him back until he was stable.

“Good morning,” O’Donnell started. “I brought you the paint you requested.”

He looked up over his shoulder to see the chemist had come alone, and he rolled over to sit up. When O’Donnell sheepishly handed him the can, he readily took it, but tucked it into his lap.

“Thanks.” He shied from eye contact.

“...Oh! You must be upset because you didn’t just ask for paint. Fret not.” O’Donnell reached into the hip pocket of his lab coat, and produced a reader and held it out to him. “You asked for books. I wasn’t sure what you might like, so I just downloaded a mess of things. You’re free to download whatever you like. The reader’s registered with the Central server.”

Galen stared at the device, and didn’t know how to respond to being offered such a thing. When he’d asked for books, he’d thought asking for a _book_ would produce the physical copy of something, not a _reader_. He’d never had a reader to himself--the whole family had shared one, and Vana used it more than anybody. The irony was not lost on Galen, either, that O’Donnell had outfitted the thing with an impact-resistant protective case. Maybe this had been the man in white’s idea: a test of whether Galen could keep himself from eating something, when overcoming the compulsion would reward him by providing mental stimulation and alleviating isolation.

He caught himself glaring at the dark glassy stain in the floor and took the reader from O’Donnell.

“Y’all are... too generous. Don’t deserve this kindness.”

The chemist frowned at the sentiment.

“It’s the least we can do for you. You’ve been through so much already, and we haven’t even gotten to your diagnostics screening.”

Galen tapped the power button on the side and flicked the screen on. The navigation keypad along the bottom edge befuddled him and he pecked at it.

“Can I... ask a stupid question?”

“I don’t imagine it’s very stupid.”

“Has this place got security guards?”

O’Donnell crouched to be closer to the boy’s eye level where he sat in the floor, and tried to determine how to answer based on what reason Galen could possibly have for asking such a thing.

“This building is very secure. We have several guards, and extensive surveillance.”

“An’ their uniform, it’s an all white suit? Grey edges?”

The chemist’s eyes narrowed, brow shifting from scrutiny to concern.

“Why? Did one of them come in here?”

Again, Galen glanced at the vitreous slurry-stain. Left unattended, the stomach enzymes had reduced the food to carbon, and the mess had dissipated into the melted glass before the enzymes lost their potency and let the whole thing set up like it had been there all along. A lump formed in his throat.

“Long, greyish hair? But not all that old, I guess? Gold tooth. He’s one of yours, yeah?”

The chemist’s features flattened in a squint for a moment, but he reached out to hold Galen’s shoulders to look him in the eye.

“That’s... Michael. What did he want?”

“...Dunno.”

“Galen, I meant it when I said you could speak to us without consequence. The guards aren’t permitted in here unless they’re accompanying Lyst or me. No one but James and I have clearance to get in here. Did he say anything to you?”

 _Follow all instructions to the letter_.

Galen shook his head and opened the first book he could click on.

“Thought it was weird, is all, that he wasn’t with you guys.” He tried to look like he had gotten absorbed in the romance novel, uninterested in conversation. “Guess he wasn’t supposed to be.”

“No. No, he wasn’t. Will you be all right for another day or so? We had to rent out a lot of the machines we need to run your diagnostics, but they won’t be here until tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

The flat affect indicated otherwise, but O’Donnell didn’t press him further.

“Please tell Lyst or me if Michael, or anyone else, comes in here again. You don’t have to go into detail, if you don’t want. But I promise you that the two of us want to keep you safe. If Michael doesn’t make you feel safe, neither of us want that.”

Galen didn’t have a response.

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

Galen flinched when Lyst and O’Donnell next visited, and withdrew into the corner before either could even greet him. The paint, can and all, had vanished, as had the reader. Balled up inside his head, he upset himself all over again over his own lack of self-control.

“I, I, I, I, I-- couldn’t help it--” He swallowed hard, trembling. “There’s gotta be a way t’make it up t’ya somehow.”

“You... how did you...” Lyst uncrossed his arms, and was looking around the room for proof he was wrong. He didn’t find any. “How did you eat the reader? --And the _can_?”

“I--” He looked to O’Donnell for an affirmation that it was okay to speak. “Ss, sssuck on it ‘til it melts. Like candy, or s, somethin’, I guess...”

“Incredible.” Lyst dropped all incredulity, now again fascinated. “Really, though, Galen. If you’d known you were going to eat it, you could have simply asked for an old, broken reader. It would have been fine to ask for that.”

“I-- I thought y’was gonna bring me a paper book. Know it sounds real sorry of me t’say, but... I forgot readers could even _have_ books.”

“I don’t know that our budget could allow for antiques like that.” As tactfully as possible, O’Donnell asked, “You mean to say you don’t think you would have any compulsion to eat paper?”

“Haven’t had one so far. Not that I noticed.” Galen sighed and stared at their shoes in dejection, trying not to remember how the security guard had removed all the paper from the room on his way out when he’d been there. “I... get y’all not entrustin’ me with antiques. It was dumb of me t’even ask. Knew better. I ate my own damn e-cig, an’ Walkman, and--”

“Hey, now.” Lyst wagged a gracious finger at him. “You needn’t beat yourself up. So you had an expensive meal. It’s quite all right. Part of this is learning how your appetite works, little Galen. Galenula. Hhn.” He grinned, scrunching his nose.

“You finished off that can of paint in no time,” O’Donnell began. “We expected it to tide you over for at least a day, but that’s clearly not the case. Do we need to bring you larger, ah, _servings_? It’s difficult to bring things more frequently, but if we need to figure out how to schedule that, we will.”

“Metal.” Galen got doe-eyed at having blurted out the craving, envisioning what a _larger serving_ might resemble. “Lots a metal. Computer parts if y'can.”

O’Donnell smiled, able to get their subject on a thought which seemed to calm him.

“We’ll see what we can do. In the mean time, Galen, we did come today for more than to just see you... We can start one set of tests this afternoon, if you’re up for it.”

Galen shook his head in dismissal that he could tell them no, and stood compliant.

“Whatever you need of me.”

Lyst left the room long enough to wheel in a small cart with two trays on top. In one surgical tray lay a fistful of stoppered vials, while in the other lay a variety of tubing and sterile-packaged implements. O’Donnell retrieved a pair of folding chairs once his colleague had returned, as not to leave Galen unattended with the door unlocked, and set them out opposite one another next to the cart.

“A blood panel.” The pharmacist refrained from mentioning even anecdotally that it had been since college that he’d had any phlebotomy practice. “A rather extensive one, I’m afraid. I’ll be gentle.”

“Drawin’ blood? Don’t bother me any.” Galen sat in the chair Lyst did not, and already found himself eyeing the glass on the tray. “One of y’gonna hold me?”

“If it’ll make you feel better, I’m right behind you,” O’Donnell reassured, both hands on the back of the folding chair.

“First, vitals.”

Lyst produced a sphygmomanometer from a drawer in the cart. He wrapped the cuff around Galen’s upper arm, then depressed the auto-inflate mechanism so that the gauge pressed against his antecubital fold could take the composite measure of the boy’s blood pressure. With a holographic chirp, it annotated the measurement, and Lyst let the pressure out of the instrument and put it away. He got the infrared thermometer from the drawer next, and waved it over Galen’s forehead twice, and annotated its measure as well. Then, from the bottom drawer, the pharmacist set out a scale between the two of them, and suggested Galen stand on it. The only measure Galen saw for himself, it registered 81.6kg. The stalker never really had dealt much with metric, and he sat back down.

“Hm.”

“Hmm?” Hoping for an understanding, Galen looked expectantly to Lyst, who kept tapping away at calculations and annotations, then up behind him to O’Donnell, who also watched Lyst.

“How tall are you?” Lyst asked.

“Five-five. ‘Bout 130, last I checked.”

“Closer... to 180 pounds, it seems. Bell gave us his patient chart data when we overtook your care. You weigh nearly 82 kilo today. That’s about twenty-five kilo over what you should reasonably weigh. But, clearly you’re not overweight. Just... over what you ought to weigh.”

“He means to say, that kind of weight would normally factor as fat,” O’Donnell translated, concealing how wild his mind went with speculation. “Something internal has to be denser. The chemical composition of your muscles, perhaps. Or your bone mass.”

“Diagnostics will better inform us than any speculation.” Lyst put on a pair of latex gloves with minor flourish. “Now, Galenula, offer up an arm. And ball up a fist for me.”

When Galen did as instructed, Lyst gingerly tourniqueted it with a length of yellow rubber. The bespectacled pharmacist then cradled the elbow and palpated for a good artery. He took an alcohol-soaked poly swab to sterilize the area, then tapped at the resultant blood vessels again to test them to satisfaction. He nodded to himself, and unwrapped the catheter needle. Then he looked over his glasses up at Galen, who watched attentively all the while, then proceeded to eyeball exactly where to stick.

“I’m going to count to three, and you’ll feel a pinch, all right?”

Galen nodded. He had to look away, but it didn’t hurt too badly. Bell had hurt worse, he recalled, the doctor seemingly more compelled by speed and efficiency than avoiding exacting pain in the process. The stalker only looked down again once Lyst had snapped the first vial into place over the open tip of the tubing. Something about it felt wrong, and Galen tried not to squirm.

“...Shouldn’t it... be... red...?”

Rather than blood, a bright orange substance filled the vial.

“It wasn’t this color when Dr. Bell drew it?”

“...No...”

Lyst soon switched out the first vial for the second, going down the line. Some vials already contained something with which the blood was to interact, and one of these popped within a minute of the pharmacist setting it down on the tray. The burst startled all three of them, and Galen cried out when Lyst pulled the needle out and pressed down with a fresh poly swab, rather than accidentally jam the catheter further in. They all stared at the tray, wary that the others might follow suit. Galen nudged the caster-wheeled cart with his toe, to push it further away from all of them.

“I... only got seven of the eight vials drawn, but I think it’s safe to say _that_ one wouldn’t have been a viable test sample.” Still holding the boy’s arm to apply pressure, he chuckled at how Galen had done what all three of them had thought of doing. “It’s fine. We got almost all of them, and these will definitely give us much information to work with. I won’t terrorize you further right now.”

Eyes glazed in revulsion, Galen couldn’t stop staring at the vials, many of which had turned nearly neon.

“That... that ain’t blood. Ain’t my blood.”

“It came out of your veins, Galen,” O’Donnell soothed, putting his hands to Galen’s shoulders. “The tests will tell us whether it’s supposed to be there.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Lyst seconded. “Once I get the chance to send off this panel to the lab, we’ll be sure to come right back with something you’ll like.”

“--Hhmetal,” Galen reflexively repeated, transfixed upon the fluid in the glass.

“Yes, yes. We know. Hm! You liked paint. Would you like _soap_ as well, perhaps?”

“Soap sounds nice,” he agreed, becalmed by the idea of eating.

Lyst applied a patch of paper tape over the poly swab, and let go finally.

“Soap. And something metal. Absolutely.”

The pharmacist collected up all the vials into a foam-lined medical-grade mailer carton. From what Galen could tell as he watched, it wasn’t at all unlike a test tube rack fitted inside there, and it seemed to have thermal insulation to keep it within a certain range, as well. He noticed the side of the carton read _BF Meehl_ before it vanished safely into the cart drawer, and Lyst tucked all the remainder of nonsense into the sharps bin in another drawer. O’Donnell patted Galen on the shoulder reassuringly, to shake him out of his stupor enough that he’d notice them leave.

“I’ll come and check on you in about an hour, all right?”

Galen took the shoulder pat as urging to stand so the scientists could retrieve the chair, then he returned to his favored corner next to the bathroom.

“Yeah. ...Thanks, any rate.”

He watched them exit, and observed this time the door opened in a series of magnetic buzzing. Maybe the security guard was watching the whole time, and let them in and out.

Once they were gone, he stared down at the taped poly swab, and forcing himself to take a nap was the only thing that kept him from ripping it off to see if the catheter had gotten out all the orange stuff.


	4. 3|0|0|OX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Torber's desperate to determine what became of Galen.
> 
> TW: Stages of loss and grieving a loved one, technically some robotics gore?

Deep bags under his eyes, Torber threw his arms up at the information peddler, fed up with the tween boy.

“You gotta know somethin’. Somebody’s gotta.”

“I can’t promise a thing, but y’know if I’m not the first one y’asked, every peddler down here’s got an ear to the ground for ya.” The young, shaven peddler got an equally tired look in his eye, playing sympathy. “For how dogged y’are about it, y’can’t possibly be the only one lookin’ for him.”

The comment heated Torber’s weariness to a confused, nearly irate hurt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The network works together on truck like this, man. Stalkers look out for each other best we can. It ain’t all about cred, even if city seems t’think otherwise.”

Torber patted him on the shoulder and slipped him a pair of singles for his trouble, then left the boy alone.

It was coming up on a month since Epiphany, since Galen had vanished without warning. The rest of the family had already lost hope in looking for him, and probably would have given up far sooner, had Torber told them the severity of Galen’s symptoms. They all believed to some degree that Galen had ruined their Epiphany, the biggest family celebration of the year for stalkers, by wrecking the living room and running off, and whether or not he’d intentionally done so–why would they bother? To them, Galen’s accident had rendered him mentally unstable, and he finally snapped that morning the first week of January. To them, he probably had just straight up finally flaked for good. To them, this was just a long-term flake–if he wanted to come back, he’d come back on his own, and it wasn’t up to them to reach out. Galen ran off seeking solitude so frequently, and only Torber and Ruti really grasped the depth of the boy’s depression, and how it isolated him from his loved ones. But, for the two who knew the weight of the illness upon him, there was still the plausibility for the entire family that Galen had committed suicide shortly after leaving them.

Torber was desperate to believe otherwise, after everything he’d seen. He couldn’t allow Galen to be gone. It was his fault that Galen had even gone off on his own the day after Christmas. If he’d just gone _with_ Galen–

So, Torber had become habituated to a three part ritual, though not always in the same order. He would check the yards he remembered Galen favoring for truffling, and would check the street vendors he remembered Galen liked to snag lunch from. He would still truffle as usual, but with greater intensity and for far shorter. And he would negotiate as usual, but he also beleaguered to familiarize himself with the lifeline of the Quarter: its peddlers.

With how frequent and often accidental it was to procure verbot substances, information, and technologies in the Quarter, the communication infrastructure in the Quarter relied upon untraceable knowledge in order to operate: and that task fell upon those they called _information peddlers_. Where to dive, if a body sought out verbot. Where to avoid, if a body sought to stay alive, and stay on the Level. Who was who, and what was what, where and when. With collaboration between peddlers and hackers, the Quarter had access to a veritable hand-composed almanac, often disguised by having repurposed old encylopedias’ binding: a current edition of a _Diamond Compendium_ was worth several hundred cred on a good day, if not by merit alone of how painstaking the publication was to compile with reliable information. Of all the vocational classes created by the Quarter, peddlers were oft the youngest, and oft more cutthroat than even the negotiators who mediated deals for items and services to exchange hands. The newsies of the Quarter all knew one another, even if they didn’t all run together, and comprised the most reliable and crucial network in the whole lot.

That morning, Torber had started off his ritual by hitting up peddlers in East End, and came across a second one, one he didn’t remember seeing before. The black girl had bangtails curled up top and pinned, wrapped forward in a polka-dot bandanna. For her looking nearly twenty with her heavy fifties-style makeup, Torber would have totally thought he’d remember her peddling years before now. He discarded the thought and approached her as she slouched against a brick wall with an emery board, attending fake nails.

“Y’seen a truffler named Galen Miner?”

“I seen lots a trufflers. An’ the name sooorta? rings a bell? Cred talks.” Torber held up a five, but didn’t hand it over. “Mm, don’t like that, but fine. You got any better specs than a name an’ vocation?”

“A little shorter’n me. Half-Pinoy. Seventeen. Undercut, long, usually in his face. He’s nervous around crowds, an’ last the family’s seen him, he was real sick.”

When the peddler just watched him expectantly for a minute, Torber rolled his eyes and handed over the cred, which she swiped through the cred-attachment of her reader to verify the value. She tucked the cred into her bra and blew a gum bubble.

“Galen… Galen’s that kid that they fished outta that drum yard ‘round New Year’s, yeah? Mostly BF Meehl stuff?”

“Yeah.” He narrowly kept himself from admitting it was the first he’d heard of any constituents regarding whose dump site it was, and he _really_ didn’t like the implications of hearing a _pharmaceutical company_ being among those. He glossed over suspecting Bell might have had anything to do with Galen’s disappearance through association alone, and cleared his throat. “He got an All’s Well when we took him, but then he flaked on ‘Piphany.”

“Sounds like you’re bankin’ on the answer of his goin’ missin’, that he wants to stay gone. Rather’n findin’ reasons he never comin’ back.”

“Biggest hope’s he’s even still kickin’. He was doin’ _bad_ the last I seen him. I just… wanna bring him home.”

“Hey, hey man. You his brother?” A deflated nod. “I get losin’ family to the _Zone_. You can trust me t’keep an eye an’ ear peeled for ya, aight? Name’s Chrys.”

“Torber. Yeah, that’s what anybody’s said. …Thanks anyway.”

From there Torber went to a Level 2 yard further North than he usually did. Two other much larger factories cornered in the back lot of a smaller factory, right under where Route 440 slingshot into I-78 right up to Level 5. He knew Galen often came here to smoke. Torber was the only Miner that knew about his smoking habit, but he’d never felt the need to rat him out for it. Galen had once articulated that he liked this yard because it had good air flow, and didn’t usually require a respirator. The most frequent dumping sources seemed engineering in nature. Lots of scrap metal and odd shaped remnants of thermal plastics. It also didn’t see fresh drifts too often, meaning the lot was either packed or a graveyard. He didn’t bother asking around for its recent traffic history before heading up, because no matter what he had a hunch it’d be profitable to attend there that day.

Today, it was packed. The three major players for the lot had all dumped fresh within the past week, one of whom had just dumped the night before. Unfinished aluminum pieces littered the whole place, and some regions of the drift even looked like reject automotive parts. With absent disappointment, Torber committed to a patch of drift for the day, knowing from the traffic of trufflers that he would not find his crowd-shy brother here.

Digging for mere minutes, he set his hand upon what felt like a cold arm, and seeing it resembled one as well, he pulled it slowly toward him in a chill. Relieved but still alarmed, he freed the realistically fleshy object, which terminated at the elbow in raw-ended electronics connections. He sputtered and nearly threw the cybernetic arm.

“– _FhhHucking Thetics_.”

Somebody nearby laughed. The fear-loathing of potentially having disinterred a dead body drained slowly from him, and his breathing steadied. Of course one of the companies that dumped up here dumped reject Thetic parts. Cybernetic technology had made breakneck progress in the past five years, but not without a quantity-over-quality philosophy that rivaled even the turnover rate of information technologies. Such lode discoveries became ever increasingly commonplace with every passing Moore Cycle.

Once he’d calmed down enough, Torber pulled out his phone to call Orpi and their father up. By habit he navigated messaging history, but he stopped short. Galen’s name had fallen far down on the list, ordered by how recently Torber had communicated with a given number–and one name sandwiched itself between people he’d spoken to that day and the number no one had gotten a hold of since Christmas.

Ame.

Torber thought again to what the peddlers had told him that morning. Surely, his girlfriend had to have been looking for Galen, too, all this time. He felt guilty opening the text history to skim it for some kind of clue as to Ame’s grasp of the situation, but all that really stuck out was the fact she’d not once responded despite easily fifty texts from Galen in a one-week time span. It pained Torber that he could in his head hear the contents of the texts read back in his brother’s voice.

Useless to him right now. He shook himself back to reality and phoned his father first.

“Hey, I was just about t’call you, there’s a whole Xa–”

“–Hey, whatever your luck is, I probably got luckier’n you today. They just dumped fresh last night on Level 2 right under 440 and I-78, in the engineers’ lot.”

“Slag. That’s gotta be better’n car parts. I’ll raise Orpi and we’ll be there in fifteen.”

To hedge his bets, Torber texted Orpi, then got back to work while he waited on his brother and father to arrive.

Dolom and Orpi arrived with a rented deep cart, and they easily located Torber by his telltale green knit cap that he’d worn every day for years. The process went smoothly once the three of them set to it, the extraction of Wolframized poly-alloy components, the fake body parts of fake bodies, to be hauled back down to Level 1 and unloaded at a sorters’ cadre. Orpi pulled a full leg out at one point and petted it, making goo goo eyes at the two of them. Dolom tossed a sarcastic hunk of phthalated flesh at him in dismissal, and the boy laughed.

By the late afternoon, the line for the East End cadre was overrun for the day, owing to the lot the Miners had just attended. Colloquially, the Quarter called the building which was once an automotive assembly plant the Copper Cadre, owing to its high intake rate of wired electronics. Once it came for their turn, Torber stepped up to speak with the negotiator who handled the queue they’d stood in. Though he still contributed a lot to the hunting down of individual materiel to pawn, acting as _negotiator_ was the skillset he best provided his family.

“Please tell me you brought somethin’ more appealin’ than prototype car parts that don’t go to any cars on the market.” In all black, the thick, muscular mixed-Latin woman had long, thick, braided side-whiskers and nothing else to speak of.

“Zeuner, have I got a deal for you.” When she deadpanned him, he made a showy gesture of the content of the family’s cart. “See for y’self.”

The negotiator peered in, and pulled out a complete arm, feigning disinterest as she dropped it right back in. She glanced up from where she leaned over the cart.

“Seen a coupla Thetic bins today, but nobody’s brought up _nothin’ but_ so far.” She pointed to the large rectangular expanse of corrugated steel on the assembly floor just inside. “Dump it on the scale, Miner.”

The three complied, and the metrics stunned even Zeuner.

“Holy moly,” she uttered, watching as the preliminary estimates rolled through the screen as to composition. “There’s over two-hundred pounds of Wolframized poly-aluminum here. Y’get this all today?”

“Yes’m,” Orpi chirped from behind them, arms akimbo.

She laughed with a huge grin and slapped Orpi on the back, then tapped a few things into her decade-old reader.

“Go see Dio up front for y’cred. I shot him an invoice t’run over with y’all. Runnin’ estimate’s about seventy, but he’s feelin’ generous lately with how ambitious the _Thetic companion industry’s_ been gettin’. Levelers’ll pave the way for just about anything, I’ll wager.”

The three of them knew better than to say anything, all of them having sorely underestimated the composition of the metal parts trapped inside phthalated faux-flesh. Orpi blamed it on Zeuner being in a good mood, but Dolom was like-minded to Torber that there was some borderline-to-full-on verbot about to transpire once those parts hit the Quarter’s thriving black market. Torber wondered initially if the price quote could be chalked up to it being some patented new poly-alloy not yet on the market. Even on their way rounding to the office side of the building, he even speculated whether it was less the raw parts and more the things themselves, that perhaps the hackers that would buy these limbs from the Cadre were going to make some manner of prosthetic use of the parts in-tact. And he had to think fast to mentally outline his plan of attack, because Orpi had already started slagging with the cred-negotiator.

“Dioooo,” Orpi sang, slinking up to the window slot. The Korean teen with a buzzed mohawk and teal square-neck tank pretended to be annoyed, but the look on his face belied that he’d already seen the Miners’ invoice. “So Zeuner tells us y’gonna like what we brought todaaay.”

Torber pulled him back by the shoulder and stepped up to lean on the sill of the window, and traced the small holes which let sound carry between receptionist and client. The younger brother chuffed with a grin as he stepped off.

“You seen what we brought,” the Miners’ negotiator initiated. “What can ya do for us today?”

“I dunno…” He squinted at Torber. “Sixty… eight?”

“Comon, Zeuner quoted me at least seventy, an’ she fessed t’lowballin’. All that truck’s gotta be worth at least a hundred t’y’all’s buyers.”

“Greedy greedy greedy! I can do seventy-five.”

“Look over that invoice again, and tell me it’s not worth at _least_ ninety. I’ll all but guarantee you there’s patent alloy-compounds in there. I know it’s all Wolframized aluminum. Real life-like, an’ most of ‘em didn’t get ripped up in transport, look near pristine honestly. Fooled me somethin’ ghostly in the yard when I first found the drift lode.” He leaned his head against the window, side-eyeing Dio. “Dio… we both know what that cart-to-market stands to bring in here. Ain’t askin’ for a cut of the verbot here, man. Just askin’ for… the handlin’ fee. That’s fair, yeah?”

Dio looked over his Web screen again, and fidgeted with his small circle-frame readers.

“I’ll… I’ll do a hundred-twenty. Take it or I give you sixty-eight. I got fifty more customers ‘fore I close up for the night, Miner. Stop buggin’ me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll bite. I’ll bite.”

The cred-negotiator did a head count and swiped three blank cards through the slot on the side of his Web screen in succession, and slid them in a stack through the slot at the bottom of the window, which Torber slipped into the inner breast pocket of his asymmetrical leatherette vest.

“Pleasure as always, Choi.”

“Don’t be a stranger, if you’ll unload that kinda truck my way,” Dio hollered through a cupped hand at him.

Once outside, the other two cred changed hands to Orpi and Dolom. The father whistled and grabbed both of his sons by the shoulders to shake them vigorously.

“Forty cred a- _PIECE_ today, you two! Not sayin’ we gotta fajita night comin’ up, but I think we all gotta good celebratory meal in our near future.”

“I… I ain’t feelin’ it, Dad.” Torber leaned into him before pulling away. “Y’all go on without me, yeah?”

“Man, you turnin’ down steak!” Orpi shot him a sour look. “Don’t tell me y’goin’ loon too.”

“Out of line,” Dolom snapped, shoving him and looking to his eldest. “Though I imagine I’d wanna know what gives. It was a good day.”

“So– _rry_.”

“I know today was big, but. Went up there lookin’ for _him_.” Torber couldn’t look at either of them. “His ghost’s still leadin’ the way for the good truck, I guess. …I gotta. Clear my head or somethin’.”

They let him walk off without further objection.

Torber wandered Level 1′s commercial district, burrito in one hand, cell in the other. Occasionally he’d stop to peel down more of the foil wrapper, then continue on again. Again he found himself skimming the texts from this girl who likely now considered herself Galen’s ex. Halfway through the massive cylinder of proteins, he got the nerve to shoot Ame a text of his own.

|| _This is Torber. It’s a long shot, but you seen Galen? Been a month since anybody seen him. Don’t know if you been getting his texts. Lotta shit’s happened. We’re worried sick._ ||

By the time he hit send, he very much needed a fizz to wash down the lump in his throat.

After he’d eaten, Torber passed a car graveyard and stopped. He looked around. It wasn’t a yard proper, wedged between a couple of commercial buildings. He stepped inside the hurricane fence and looked around. Tread-style and no younger than twenty years old, the vehicles seemed long since stripped of any viable materials and parts, and the resting place for their cheap vacuum-molded fiberglass frames had gone undisturbed long enough actual plants had sprouted up to fill the empty tire wells and partially obscure bumpers. He wondered why the Levelers had stopped abandoning their cars here in this lot, but for once he welcomed the solitude.

“Nothin’ but… me an’ fiberglass…”

He climbed up onto the roof of an SUV, and shoved his weight down on it a few times in an attempt to get it to bounce. The physical strain on his legs got his blood pumping, and he gradually built up the force to start straight up jumping on the roof. He pulled out the crowbar from his side bag and whaled on the already-cracked windshield with a satisfying din. He leaped to the roof of a truck nearby, then down onto its hood, and kicked in its windshield, too, savoring the reminder his work boots were steel-toed. He went down the line in kind, doing his best to break, dent, or pry anything he could on the vehicles, taking everything out on them.

And in that moment five weeks of pure stress and grief burst from him. He ended up sitting, heaving, in the back of a truck once he’d worn himself out. Before he could accidentally fall asleep in the lot, he headed off to the community showers before he could accidentally fall asleep.

From that night onward, any time he couldn’t focus, he broke away for a bit, and came to the lot. It didn’t seem anyone owned the lot, since no matter how much more damage he wrought, it never attracted any attention or heightened security. He brought an aluminum baseball bat from home the next and every time he visited again, the lever to a frequent and fantastic release valve.

About two weeks after he’d started visiting the lot in this way, he came out on a cloudless afternoon when he couldn’t get his head clear enough to sink into truffling for the day.

“–HEY JACKASS.”

Torber stopped, almost thinking he’d imagined hearing it over his most recent wrecking spree. A figure stood just inside the fence, her arms crossed tight. He jumped down from the sedan and slowly approached her. She had a stalker hairstyle–squared off bangs on an otherwise shaven head–but the hair was dyed electric blue. She wore a crop top under low-dip coverall shorts and calf-high work boots, to flaunt the collection of tattoos which decorated her skin from throat to thigh. Up close, Torber noticed the Japanese girl’s dark, dramatic gothic makeup, and an industrial complex of ear piercings.

“Ya mind tellin’ me what happened t’Galen? Since he ain’t told me?”

Torber choked up, unable not to stare at this painted lady. He’d never met her in person, and he’d all but stopped thinking about her once he had physical means to get his stress out. No wonder Galen hadn’t wanted their dad to know about her. Most stalkers frowned on purely aesthetic alterations to one’s body, and the hygiene and upkeep required to keep up with ink and piercings simply made them impractical in the conditions of a stalking yard or sorting floor. He would have doubted she was a stalker at all, just some crustpunk Leveler poser, but he knew a verbot-chaser when he saw one.

“–I, y’got my text then. Wait, no. Y’sayin’ ya didn’t get any of his?”

“The fuck you talkin’ about? What fuckin’ texts? I been blowin’ his phone up since fuckin’ Christmas! Damn near close t’givin’ up.”

“…Then you don’t know. An’ worse, y’not seen him either.” Torber had to sit down on the hood of a nearby sedan. When he noticed her stare, he sighed. “Galen was in an accident, second day of Christmas. Drum lot haystack collapsed on him. Lost his phone, lost everything. Got buried up unconscious in that fuckin’ freak blizzard four days ‘fore anybody could find him.”

The frank description got Ame sitting on a hood, too, and she glared at him in horror, a hand to her mouth.

“Is he…?”

“…Not sure, t’be fair with you. We found him alive, an’ even the Good Doc thought he was _just fine!_ But then… he got… sideways. Mental. He ran off on Epiphany ‘fore anybody woke up, and… nobody’s seen him since.” Torber’s face scrunched and he gave her a tired look. “If y’not been gettin’ texts from my cell, how the hell did you find me? Out _here_?”

“Peddlers. Duh. You’re real loud on the grid, y’know. You’re the only lead I had. The only relative I figured was most likely t’know anything, an’ be willin’ t’talk ta me.” Ame mechanically rubbed at her decorated thighs and stared at the time-broken asphalt. “He never flaked on me like that. Always came ta me when he was upset. Then bam, outta nowhere, total silence… Fuckin’ ass, couldn’t even text– Wait, no–” Her head snapped up and she frowned, nostrils flared in distress. “Y’said he _was_ textin’ me? From _your_ phone!”

“Yeah. …Geez.” Torber pulled the text history up, and tossed it to her. “He practically blew up y’phone. Constantly borrowin’ mine tryin’ t’apologize.”

She scrolled through the texts several times in full, and couldn’t not cry as she very well felt like she was reading messages postmortem. Anger cut through the mascara-streaked tears and she started bawling. Torber flinched when she practically flung it back at him.

“–Ain’t my number! That fuckin’ idiot trustin’ his memory with numbers. Probably didn’t even double check with a peddler the cell was right! Didn’t even get suspicious when I wasn’t replyin’!”

Torber shoved his phone in his pocket, eyes wet, and he wagged a finger at her with a snarl.

“You be careful how you talk about the dead, yeah? He’s ours, too.”

Admitting his worst fear was a near certainty got him sniveling furiously.

“Ya got some nerve, tryin’ ta police how I grieve! At least _you_ had some clue what was goin’ on! I thought he’d up and left me all this time, no explanation! Wonderin’ what I did wrong. Thinkin’ all he wanted bein’ around me was that I got cred anna place ta myself, that he got tired a me or some shit.” She snarled right back at him. “He never once could see outside himself long enough, to take in the effect his ghostin’ had on the folks around him. Never once could see outside himself from far enough away, to understand he didn’t tell nobody anything.” She choked on sarcasm. “Got half a mind t’think he got an identity wipe and started over in Manhattan, or Atlantic City. Never heard from again. Fuckin’ flake.”

“Y’know he ran off like that for stress. Just how bad his depression was.” Torber couldn’t not smile at hearing the same idiotic tired optimism he’d fed himself for over a month. “Y’really think he might still be alive?”

“He better not be.” She got up to storm off. “No matter how bad a body’s brain chemicals are, don’t excuse lettin’ it rip up everything ya ever loved. I deserved better. We all did, if y’ask me.”

“Slag, dramatic much?”

Ame looked back at him, apologetic for only a moment before regaining her air of stern indignity.

“Thanks for talkin’ t’me. Least I got that much.”

Alone again, Torber checked his phone, to see the girl had corrected the number in his contacts, and he exhaled hard, clutching the cell to his chest as he collapsed back on the windowless vehicle.

He’d been too presumptuous to fact-check the phone number, too.

Once in bed for the night, Torber texted Ame to ask whether she had any photos of Galen. He awoke to her having sent him a pic of her and Galen with the Esplanade ferris wheel in the background. He ended up setting the photo as his wallpaper, cropping her out, and he went about the rest of his day hoping she’d be willing to stay in touch with him. Maybe together, the two of them could mitigate their grief, and possibly even work toward the answer to what had become of Galen Miner.


	5. 3|2|3|W

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chemists of Fulton Catalytics continue testing Galen’s limitations.
> 
> Super WIP, but it's a good start.

O’Donnell leaned against the far wall and watched Galen satisfyingly play with the boxes’ worth of paper clips they’d found for him. Such was the standard daily allotment, the past few days: A cleaner of some kind, a can of paint, and some paper clips. Galen had already that day dispatched the jug of window cleaner and the paint, and sat quite literally playing with his food by inventing shapes to eat. At first, the clips had befuddled and disappointed him, but the fidgeting appeal of the small lengths of brightly colored coated wire appealed greatly to his creativity.

“All, right, Galen. Since it’s your first day out of the basement, we’re going to have to take some precautionary measures.”

“–Firf day wut?” He swallowed the odd star-like thing he’d made and looked up, having half-forgotten he was being watched. “Y’takin’ me outside the room? What for?”

“Some of the diagnostic equipment we need can’t fit in here. The imaging machines we’re renting arrived today. We’ll be doing x-rays.” O’Donnell pulled a folded up white garment from his lab coat pocket and handed it over to Galen. “I’m sure there’s a great many things in this factory that will ignite your compulsions, so we need to restrain you until we get to where Lyst is calibrating the equipment. I’m not going to sugar-coat it: this is a straitjacket. …We’ve researched restraint options, and this is the most comfortable option we could come up with that can be metal-free, and also fall within our budget limitations.”

Galen took it from him where he sat, and unfolded it to let the sleeves hang down along the ground. He fingered the fabric and couldn’t place the thick softness of it. One sniff of it frustrated him, and he smelled deeper of it a second and third time before staring at O’Donnell, wild-eyed.

“This ain’t poly. Slag is this.”

“It’s cotton. Is it okay?” O’Donnell stood firm, hoping not to meet resistance, when the two scientists had done their best to accommodate.

“Cotton.” Galen lingered on the softness at length before he set it in his lap and poured the last of his box of paper clips into his mouth. Then he leaped up and eagerly shimmied up into the garment. Once his head was poked out, he tried to fix his hair, but the exaggerated sleeves prevented him from doing so easily. With him so readily compliant, O’Donnell moved to help Galen rake his hair back to how he usually wore it, and stood there, waiting for Galen’s approval. “This thing’s comfy. Twentieth Century dregs had it plush. …I think I can still grab stuff, though.”

“That’s what these parts are for.” O’Donnell picked up the straps which dangled off the jacket’s cuffs, and held them out for Galen to see. “Have you seen a straitjacket before?”

Galen shook his head no, so O’Donnell moved to application, narrating as he went.

“Put your arms across your chest, except loop them through the strap in the front there. And now the strap with the loop… goes between your legs and gets tied to the strap in the back… And then the sleeve straps get tied together in the back as well. Let me know if the knots are uncomfortable. Tying flat straps isn’t really in my skill set, and I’m certain this kind of thing goes more smoothly with buckles to facilitate it, I’m afraid.”

Galen wiggled a bit, and the compactness of it calmed him. Plenty of room to shift his arm placement, but not nearly enough room to get out of the thing. He gave the chemist a strange smile.

“This was a good idea.”

“Everything feel secure?” Galen nodded. “All right then, let’s be on our way.”

O’Donnell used the central strap in the back as a guiding handle. Stepping up to the door yielded the same magnetic buzz-clicks Galen had noticed several times before. Upon stepping out into the main floor, the basement dazzled Galen’s senses dumb. Clear pipelines dipped in and out of the ceiling leading to and from dozens of vats both seen and unseen at this floor of the facility. Galen couldn’t even begin to fathom what technicolor variety of substances flowed through the building’s veins, unable to smell them, let alone recognize them. O’Donnell had to continue nudging him the entire way along, to get to the other end of the large building. Especially hesitant to moving along, the stalker stared at one pale, translucent orange line in particular, haunted by the concept that there must be a heart to the building.

“What… is this place?” Galen swallowed absent drool.

“I suppose it does no harm to tell you you’re in the care of Fulton Catalytics. We’re a subsidiary of BF Meehl that deals in pharmaceutical precursors and industrial catalysts. We’re borrowing equipment from a sister subsidiary to help with your… unique case.”

“An’ that…” He swallowed again, surrounded by mechanical pumping and whirring. “…That orange stuff there?”

“That… if memory serves me, is a Wolfrin adjuvant. It’s either that one or the red one three rows next to it. Can’t remember what preparation of it we’re contracted for this month.” When Galen didn’t reply, O’Donnell elaborated, “In the Wolframizing process, the fluoridated urethane catalyst has to spread out in a precise parts per mixture to guarantee it interferes with the crystal structure of the metal in the desired way, to stimulate the metals in the alloy to form covalent bonds. An adjuvant maximizes the urethane’s ability to spread through the metal slag.”

“…I… I see lotsa different colors in these veins. …Any stuff you make’s yelluh?”

“–Not currently,” O’Donnell finally replied, hesitant. “Mind I told you that you can’t eat any of the things out here on the factory floor. They’re part of contracted orders for clients. If you want any of these chemicals for a meal, I’m sure it can be arranged, but–”

“I said somethin’ wrong.” Galen sniffed apologetically, reacting to O’Donnell’s stiffened posture and rambling tone. “Not everything I can eat is food. I’m. I’m tryin’. S’hard.”

“No, no. It’s quite all right, Galen. Let’s keep going. It’s not far from here, to where Lyst is waiting for us.” The chemist sighed. “You’re still hung up on the fact your blood is bright orange, aren’t you?”

“You’d be hung up on it, too, if it was you.”

“The blood work should come back by Friday. It’s not too long now before we have some answers.”

A collection of large eggshell-colored equipment tucked itself into the far corner, making expert use of the industrial serial power line accessible from the floor ports. Lyst flitted from device to device every few minutes, mumbling breathlessly to himself.

“Hey Doc.”

“Hello, Galenula!” Lyst looked up from his reader and spun around in the caster-wheeled office chair in which he sat backwards, to shoot him a smile. “I trust you enjoyed your lunch.”

“The paper clips was a good idea.”


	6. 2|1|1|RAD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galen finally ate something that disagreed with him.
> 
> TW: Body horror and... some imagery. Hm bad

“We’re Channel Goldfinch 43, coming to you live from Level Six with coverage of the ongoing crisis at Fulton Catalytics. The industrial chemical factory has called it a volatile chemical spill, what is before you on your displays.” Multiple pitches and models of public defense siren sounded in solicitous harmony, at different distances from the camera footage site. Drawn down over the reporter’s face, the one-way holographic display of the BLT visor obscured both their features and voice. The camera panned out over their shoulder to illustrate the various emergency vehicles suspended about the disaster area, surrounding a multi-level factory. “This is one of the worst chemical spills in Tri-City in over a decade. Local police forces have been called on site to redirect traffic and keep pedestrians at a distance. So avoid Levels Five through Eleven in Newark’s industrial sector until further notice–if you want to avoid the fender-to-fender clog as people try to evacuate the area.”

The screen split between an aerial view of a molten greyish mass of waste to the left, encircled at gunpoint by police, while to the right was displayed an isometric diagram of the affected cross-section of the fusion city.

“Local authorities urge anyone in the affected area to remain indoors until the all-clear is issued. Tesla has turned off all external intake by air conditioning units in the Southeast half of Newark district, as a safety measure to guarantee the air quality for its consumers. Do not attempt to circumvent the emergency settings broadcast to your thermostat controls: These are to protect you.”

The reporter drew their spread out fingers in a downward pattern over the outer surface of the visor.

“And now a Goldfinch exclusive first from the factory director, one Mr. Sloan Fulton. Mister Fulton, what exactly is going on here?”

The middle aged man with black combed into his hair drew up his distracted eyes to the bulky foam windscreen of the reporter’s microphone presented near his face. He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie knot, glancing over his shoulder a moment to the spill behind them before answering.

“It’s a volatile chemical spill. An unfortunate result of several incompatible catalysts… behaving unpredictably. We promise there is no immediate threat to human li–”

The camera rumbled to the ground, still steadied by the camera operator in the direction of the disaster. To either side of the lens, the reporter and Mr. Fulton had both ducked flat to the asphalt and covered their heads. The camera focused far off in the distance, to where the waste had tensed up into a more solid looking, nearly fleshy mass roughly the size of a large automotive vehicle. A slow pan from one end of the lot to the other indicated that everyone had hit the dirt due to an abrupt spray of foot-long metallic spines, likely due to a related gas buildup.

“We’re still live, folks. The police have informed us that two of their team got hit by the… the spikes which the spill just burst with. Mister Fulton! Does your company know yet what chemicals were involved? Should these downed officers be worried?”

Fulton could no longer hide the cold sweat beading on his face. The two remained down on the ground.

“We’re looking into that as we speak. –Fulton Catalytics will guarantee full medical care for any officials responding to this crisis.”

“STAY BACK!!” a policeman shrieked at the mass before firing a warning shot at it.

A sound somewhere between a failing ‘I’-bar and a cornered rabbit sheared from it, and it seized up to fully appear somehow crawling, to escape from the scene. Its wake eroded the concrete beneath it.

“Why are the police firing at a chemical spill?” the reporter inquired. “What are you trying to hide here?”

“It’s just multiple chemicals causing unpredictable reactions–” Fulton paused a moment when his voice cracked. “I’m sure you’ve seen chemistry experiments like… like elephant toothpaste! You’re thinking, how could two clear liquids produce the sheer volume and velocity of foam they do! It’s exactly like that, except we don’t know the constituents for certain. There’s nothing alive to it: it’s simply behaving unpredictably. They shouldn’t be wasting their bullets on it. It can’t react indefinitely. It will tire itself out.” He leaned into the microphone foam and made eye contact with the camera. “Please, please adhere to the city safety alerts–we are committed to the safety of Tri-City. We’re doing everything we can to contain and limit the collateral here.”

A sudden thud crashed behind them, and the camera zoomed in to show the mass had somehow vanished. A frantic sigil traced across the reporter’s visor switched the display to aerial view, where a massive hole had been corroded in the concrete. The aerial camera zoomed in, and the mass was slowly rolling down the side of the building directly beneath them.

“I, oh. It… it’s melted through to Level 5. Do you think it will melt through the City Limits foundation?”

“We can only hope,” Fulton replied a little too quickly. He finally sat up, eyes glued to where the mass had been just minutes ago. “Then we’ll be in the clear, and we can get tighter with our remediation of the situation.”

“Thank you, Mister Fulton. This has been Goldfinch 43 reporting. Stay tuned for further developments as we receive more information. Keep your devices charged to continue receiving city alerts. To repeat, if you are in Southeast Newark, we urge you to stay indoors and not tamper with the external air intake settings Tesla has broadcast to your thermostats. Here’s Goldfinch 43 with the traffic report.”

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

Unimaginable pain and heaviness first greeted Galen’s consciousness. He felt like every inch of him needed to throw up, but he couldn’t even tell how many inches that even was, swollen beyond any capacity to move on his own. Everything burned metallic, and tasted and smelled like sulfur and chlorine. His head was clouded up, and he tried to roll onto his stomach. He couldn’t tell if he succeeded, but he did hear a startled breath nearby.

“Please let my hunch be wrong about anthropomorphizing you…” An adult male.

“A– _out_ –” Galen wheezed in desperation. His only certainty was that he couldn’t fix his problem himself.

“CHRIST–”

“ _OUT_ –” he wheezed again, muffled and pleuric.

“I am not leaving, big guy. Easy. …Not so big as before, though, I don’t think.”

“Owwwww…”

“…Can you understand me?”

“Get hhht owww–” A viscous croak came from him as he tried himself to force the sweat as furiously as he could. Aa fresh dose of anxiety-loathing washed over him for the effort, but he could tell the stuff was caking up faster than he could eliminate. “CanNH– GET–”

“Jesus! I didn’t expect to be able to get coherent words out of you. This stuff coming out, it melted through _concrete_! I didn’t bring gloves! What can I–”

“Sh, shut up, you ssstupid–” A sharp moan punctuated the attempt at articulation, and he seized up all over. The shale forming all over him thickened again, and he went limp. “The– the metal– Hard part’s not acid– G, get it outta mh, ee– Aahh–” Another acerbic bodily arrest, then practically a roar from the sheer pain: “OUT!”

The man stood there dumbfounded a moment. He quickly jumped in to help peel off the layers as they solidified, and tossed them away from the both of them as soon as he freed them. The longer Galen underwent this tandem process, the smaller and more humanoid his form became. It got too taxing to finish out the elimination all at once, and he flopped face-down in a heaving mess.

“Th, thanks.”

“Uh. Pretty sure it’s bad for just about anybody to have that stuff in their body… let alone that much.”

Now able to part his eyelids a bit, Galen turned his bloated face to the figure, to try to get a look at him. It was dark, and the man wore a two-way BLT visor. Galen squinted in discomfort that the visor shone a bright headlight directly at him.

“I, I, I don’t know what to do with this stuff. I, I, I–” He cut off in a mixture of hateful sarcasm and hesitant need. “I can’t just leave it here.”

“What… what is it?”

“Technetium,” Galen barely managed to reply through the guilt. “Nn, nnnot a bad idea t'get a doctor, Fuzz.” A long, labored pause came as he tried to even his breathing, only minutely identifying the particular nuance in the air of a unique mix of oils. “Can y'put down the gun?”

“Understandably, no. No, I cannot. How did you– Forgive me for how pointed this sounds, but considering what I just had to do… What the fuck are you?”

“A living garbage dump, apparently.” Mentally, he writhed at his self-deprecating snark. “Y'didn’t have t'help me, y'know. I’m just a slaggin’ stupid stalker.”

“Like hell I didn’t have to help. Have you always been like this? A Stalker…? No, were you–”

“You tell me whether y'think I always been like this.” Despite his irritation, Galen’s debilitating swelling had begun to recede, revealing more and more to the policeman that Galen was just a teenager. He sat up, turned away.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Not talkin’ to ya, Fuzz.”

“You’re talking to me right now, but I guess that’s fair.”

“Stop tryin’ t'fake sympathy for me, you slaggin’ dreg.” The swelling in his mouth had gone down enough that he had a bite again, and he wrapped his teeth around his bottom lip, hunching over tighter with his arms crossed tight to his chest. “You stop starin’ at me already? Kinda naked here.”

“S, sorry. Still not quite used to the idea of what you were not an hour ago. Do you… remember what just happened? Or how you got where you are?”

“An’ just where am I?”

“An alley in Southeast Level 4. Uncomfortably close to the Quarter, actually.”

“How. When– Y'know what? Ignore me. I’m just… real tired.”

“Makes two of us. Technetium? … _Technetium_ …!? It looked like you were sweating it out of you! How did radioactive waste get inside you in the first place!?”

“Ate it. …Was fed it.” He clammed up, feeling like he’d already said too much. With an agitated grunt, he rubbed at the right side of his face with a still-swollen hand. “Slaggit! My eye.”

“Do I even ask what’s wrong…?”

“I don’t stomach radioactive truck so great. Right side ain’t snappin’ back like it does. Probably gonna scar up. …It’s fine, I guess. Not like I was much to look at… before.” He felt so small as his tongue traced where several teeth had once been, and sat cross-legged with his hands in his lap. “Dunno what I’m gonna do.”

“Do you have family to go back to?”

“Y'honestly think I can go home like this?” he snapped. “Jus’ me myself, I’m a danger t'my family. Let alone Fulton’s gonna come try to take me back there–” He squirmed in place. “I can’t even go get clothes.”

“If you’ll wait here a few minutes, I can actually fix that.”

“Honestly think I’m going anywhere? Like this?”

“…Right.”

The policeman came back from the end of the alley with an armful of clothing, which he tossed at his own feet including the visor, and began disrobing. After a moment’s confusion, Galen respectfully averted his eyes from this black man with a short tapered afro.

“I just got off duty when everything happened, so I wasn’t in uniform, but it’s the only change of clothes I’ve got.” He tossed Galen the jacket, then the black polo. “Name’s Rudolph, by the way. They’re probably a bit big, but on short notice, I hope they’ll suffice.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Galen mumbled. The pants smacked him in the back with the shirt halfway over his head. As he stood, he hooked a thumb through one belt loop to keep them up. “Gotta belt or somethin’?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

“It’s fine.” The short teen approached Rudolph, with a look of annoyance tucked beneath the one long lock of dark hair in his face, a look which seemed all too familiar to such a face. He extended a handshake with his free hand, and it connected firmly but briefly. “Galen.”

“No, but I figure y'deserve t'know who just stole y'clothes.” He fingered the collar of the shirt. “Pretty plush stuff. Must be real good off, to just be able to toss this stuff.”

Once he’d replaced his visor, a now in-uniform Rudolph diffused a fluster into a grin.

“You’re welcome.”

“Yeah, well.” Galen nodded to the scattered mess of technetium shale he could still smell. “What do you think we should do with that stuff? Can’t leave it here, it’ll make folks sick.”

“I’ll call in a favor at the precinct and borrow a hazmat suit. Forgive me if my sense of humor is ill-placed, but I’m inclined to leave a paper bag on Fulton’s doorstep, if you catch my meaning.”

“They deserve worse.” Galen finally smiled. “But sounds like a start.”

“I’m not going to force you to go or do anything, but know I could arrange a doctor for you, if you wanted. Somebody who could help you with whatever damage Fulton did.”

“Seekin’ medical care’s how I got locked in Fulton’s basement in the first place. Fuck. That.”

Rudolph put up his hands in polite defense, head slightly askew.

“Forget I said it. But know that it comes from a place of me caring if you’re okay. I wouldn’t have followed you if I didn’t. I could just… I could tell something wasn’t right. Still don’t think things are right, but they’re closer. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’m sleeping tonight, after everything I’ve seen.”

“Don’t remember the last time I could, to be fair.”

“I hope you at least don’t mind me trying to keep an eye out for you. I could do what I can to frustrate Fulton’s attempts at finding you. You’re just a kid, going through some real heavy stuff, and trying to get through it alone. You deserve a couple of allies in your corner. Let me help, even if it’s just keeping an ear peeled to the police scanner.”

“Jus’ don’t bug me, yeah? Which. Speakin’ a buggin’ me. I wanna try t'go sleep for a year.”

Galen tried to walk past him to exit the alley, but Rudolph nudged at his shoulder to halt him.

“Just don’t go eating anything that would get you in trouble.”

The mutant gave him a long, sarcastic glare before walking off.

“There’ll never be a shortage a _junk_ in the Quarter.”


	7. 3|0|0|-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TWs: Body horror and necrophilic incest.
> 
> (AO3 isn't letting me "placeholder skip" but there's a chapter between 2|1|1|RAD and 3|0|0|- that I haven't written yet.)

“–Get y’own shirt, Orpi!”

Torber was still catching his breath fretting and snarling over a tangle of bed sheets, and scowled up at his younger brother from across the room. The youngest two were on the bed across the room putting on their socks and shoes.

“Hey, man. I like Nightswill, too.” Orpi pinched at the dark grey band tee with a halved peach design. “You wear his shit all the time. Don’t see why I can’t.”

“Language,” the elder snapped, beyond tired. He wasn’t about to admit that the shirt had been in his bed because he’d been sleeping with it. Orpi simply rolled his eyes and started to walk off, leaving Vana and Ruti gawking stock-still at the forming argument.

“Y’can’t just hoard all his stuff.” Orpi shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. “He ain’t comin’ back.”

“He’ll come back!” Ruti huffed, glowering at Orpi.

“We’re gonna find him.” Torber accused a pointed finger at him.

“It’s been half a year!” Incredulous, Orpi laughed and stepped back in. “Face it–if he ain’t dead, he flaked! He went loon as hell at the end! You saw how bad he slagged up the livin’ room on Epiphany. He ain’t worth fightin’ about.”

Torber’s features thinned in plaintive resignation. The likelihood Galen was indeed dead wounded Torber daily. He had kept the severity of Galen’s symptoms secret from them, to spare them the same worry it put on him. Knowing the compulsions his younger brother had been experiencing as a result of the accident only further served to haunt and torment him. How bad off Galen had been that last day, simply shoveling straight quarter drift into his mouth by the handful… Torber’s imagination could only take so much, knowing Galen had told him the urges had been mounting in severity. If it had just kept getting worse since that first week, and it had been nearly six months… It was unthinkable.

Sarcasm inscribed the middle child’s hazel eyes as he slinked up to Torber and leaned his arms across the elder’s sleeveless shoulders, feigning empathy.

“Look. I get it. He’s our brother, too. _Was_. But he’s gone. Even you stopped lookin’ for him every single day like you did at first.” Suddenly the scandalized look he gave his older brother suggested he knew why the shirt had been in the bed, suggested that that was exactly why he’d snatched upon drawing attention to it. “What would y’do if y’ _DID_ find him?”

“Gale’s. Fine.” Torber frowned and smoothed the front of his asymmetrical zippered vest, rejecting Orpi’s nettling with an even, unblinking glare. “I know it.”

Orpi scoffed and rolled his eyes again in annoyance, and reached up to pull the dark green sock hat down too far on Torber’s head. Then he walked off, knowing he wasn’t going to get anywhere. Torber readjusted the last birthday present their mother had given him, and his face soured vacantly.

“Stop scrappin’,” Dolom grunted in the living room. From the bedroom, the kids recognized the sound of their father flicking Orpi in the head. “It don’t matter if Gale’s dead or just gone. I mean, it’d be nice to know one way or another. Both his and y’mom’s birthdays comin’ up. We all dealin’ with the loss different. Y’all oughta share his stuff, not fight over it.”

The eldest child didn’t argue. But, he wasn’t about to draw attention to the various things of Galen’s that he’d already taken from his drawer of the nightstand they’d shared and put in his own, let alone relinquish them. He hoped everyone would just leave the rest as it was. Under his breath, he uttered aside, “Just… don’t wreck it in the yards today, dreg.”

After a long evening of negotiating with a sorters’ cadre to unload the family’s yard finds that day, Torber was last coming home that night. He found a note wedged in the handle-plate of the front door, addressed to him. With little care, he plucked it up and let himself in. Only once he had stepped inside did he unfold it to read it. His three siblings were rough-housing, Dolom vegetating to an old sci-fi movie on the couch. Torber half-expected he’d walk into the bedroom to find Orpi had vandalized his nightstand and strewn it everywhere. The note was on a to-go menu for Santo’s Diner, the handwriting scrawled and difficult.

|| _Hey ‘Nite. 94th and Bradley at 9. We gotta catch up._ ||

He swallowed hard. Exactly one person had ever called him that. Others’ terms of endearment for him had always been the truncation down to _Torb_ , rather than the particle of their namesakes stalkers typically discarded when naming their children. _Torber-Nite_.A four year old tries to be clever with his knowledge as he gains it, and this part of their cultural history had been no different for the two kids. He remembered telling him, _it’s Galen, like Ga-Le-Na, that’s why it’s not Ga-Len._ His pulse raced ice, and he steadied himself.

“What’s that note anyway, kiddo?” Their father had noticed he’d finally come in, but didn’t look up from the screen.

“…Aah, ah. An old friend tryin’ t’get back in touch with me. H– hadn’t seen him in forever.” He swallowed his grief and put on a smile best he could. A brief sideglance to read Orpi yielded nothing. “He’s probably got some crazy get rich quick scheme to run by me or somethin’, knowin’ ‘at guy,” he faked. “You guys go on t’dinner without me. An’ don’t wait up.”

Dolom slouched harder with a grunt, turning off the set by remote.

“We can handle dinner without ya for a night, Torb. Go hang out. Y’never go out anymore. Enjoy y’self.”

Torber pocketed the note and patted his dad’s shoulder from behind the back of the couch, the unmistakably unsettled look in his eyes going unseen, then headed out without another word.

At a brisk pace, he made quick time down Bradley Street. In the summer night air his mind weighed on the plausibility someone was slagging hard with him. But who could have possibly known this exact way to get under his skin? He could only think of a single person who’d ever called him _‘Nite_ , and after all he’d seen, how could that one person not be dead? Why had he left a note, on paper, rather than call, or text? If he’d come in person to leave a physical note, why hadn’t he simply shown himself? As he stood beneath a streetlamp at the designated intersection, his mind flooded with all the possibilities of the imminent encounter, with no clue what to expect.

Only Galen had ever called him that before–and only at his most vulnerable, when he needed Torber most. Nights like this, his practice with a butterfly knife comforted him. If this wasn’t Galen… Hell, if it was– no, he couldn’t be that bad off, reaching out like this. Somehow, he had himself half-convinced he could stomach all this better if it were a prank after all. At least then, maybe he wouldn’t have to confront himself.

« _I’m here, ‘Lena.»_

With every minute that passed after Torber had arrived at the junction between Bradley and 94th, anxiety and dread dragged him further down. He began to pace, arms crossed. Ultimately, he leaned against the lamppost and stared off down the street, ignoring foot traffic when it didn’t look like it had made eye contact.

The weight of a weak but heavy, gloved hand laid upon his shoulder, carrying with it a voice thin with fatigue.

“Y’came, man. Y’actually came.”

Torber turned, startled, to find a figure standing behind him, face obscured within a grimy off-green hoodie. With a sliver of dark hair sticking out to one side, only his mouth, neck, and jaw were visible. The complexion was off, like bad quality grey Halloween makeup… but that mouth was unmistakable. The figure nervously slouched his weight into his hoodie pockets, as Torber continued to stare helplessly. The elder hesitated only a moment before tackling him in a trembling vicegrip, clutching the back of his head something fierce through the rank smelling fabric.

“I. I thought y’was dead.”

“Probably am.”

Galen writhed, realizing he’d made such a comment aloud. When Torber reached up to draw back the hood to get a better look at the brother he hadn’t seen in six months, Galen winced and pulled it back down. But, Torber still caught a fleeting glimpse of that clouded, jaundiced eye framed with scars.

“Nn, not here.”

Galen looked both ways nervously, repeatedly. Torber grabbed him by the shoulders and glared, horrified, into the shadow of a face cast by that streetlamp.

“–What _HAPPENED_ t’you!”

It was as though tormented by a walking corpse, a mockery of the brother he once knew.

“I said not here.” Galen twisted out of the grip. His tone urged Torber to control his voice. “J, just needed someplace t’meet you. We gotta go someplace more private. Comon, we can go where I been stayin’. I’ll grab y’a bite t’eat on the way, too. Pretty sure y’not eaten yet.”

Taking it in, Torber consented shakily to following the ghoul, and the two slowly started the rest of the way down Bradley Street.

“Y’didn’t tell ‘em where y’was goin’, yeah?”

“Course not.” A shake of the head. “Just told ‘em t’go onto dinner without me.”

“Good.” A hard pause. “They can’t know, aight?”

“Don’t even know what I’d tell ‘em anyway.”

They approached the Burger Box on Bradley and 90th, only for Galen to slip Torber a small unmarked cred and stay outside while Torber got his food. Torber could tell Galen didn’t want to go inside because he didn’t want to take off the hood, but still he had to ask:

“Y’want me t’get you anything?”

Galen stared at him in a moment of tacit disappointment before stepping off to the side and reclining against the side of the establishment to wait for him.

Once on their way, they turned down 90th, went a ways, and stood at the broken curb of Hanbrook Road. Trembling visibly as he stepped up to the chain-link gate, Galen fished something out of his pocket which Torber assumed was a lockpick, the ghoul’s posture hiding the padlock as he held it to get it open. Galen opened the gate and ushered him in and set the chains and lock back in place behind them, and as they mounted the sloped driveway, Torber began to question whether it had been a key after all, since he hadn’t observed a wallet.

The copper cast of nearby street lights lit the site dimly. The unfinished building itself stood six stories tall, and had originally been destined to become low income housing in the sliver of real estate between the Quarter itself and what was considered true city limits. But, funding had run out before the insulation or walls had been filled in, the weathered and incomplete structure little more than support beams, roofing, and the beginnings of windows and stairways. The concrete turn-in ended abruptly, paving way to formless dirt. Sand was mounded up at random spots across the construction site, as well as some abandoned construction materials long-since rusted over. It had rained recently, the strong scent of river mud lingering in the entire place. It smelled of drowning.

« _So this is where he’s been all this time,_ » Torber thought to himself.

Galen stopped about halfway up the shallow slope up to the building from the street, and drew back his hood to look to Torber. Once he had Torber’s attention, he worked up the nerve to fully unzip and pull off the outerwear completely. In a gesture of heartache, he flung his glove-clad hands out showfully, still clenching the hoodie in one hand. He wore ripped hybrid denim jeans, a stained white tank, calf-high work boots, and a broad, agonized grimace. All Torber could focus on was the cracked, peeling skin of the uncovered parts of Galen’s body. The rolled top of the paper bag crushed in his fist, his gut churning. There was no doubt this was his brother–or at least, had been once.

Torber very much wanted to wake up.

“It gets worse, believe it or not.”

The lyrical ache in Galen’s voice hung acrid in the humid May air as he turned back up to the building, arms falling to his sides.

“Slaggit, Gale,” Torber called out after, beyond concerned as he he tried to catch up from having been stricken dumb. “What’d you even want from meeting me like this!”

Galen motioned to the folding chair and small card table in the middle of the enclosure, insisting it be Torber’s rightful dining arrangement. The light was best there on this floor, the streetlight filtering in from outside through an open space in what was supposed to be the floor above. He’d already tossed down the hoodie on the countertop in what appeared to have been a test setup for a kitchen space.

“I, I. I needed t’see you, ‘Nite. Nn, needed t’talk t’somebody’d get it.” He noticed Torber pacing and sighed. “Comon. Eat. I, I know ya. Y’don’t even eat lunch half the time ‘cause y’get caught up in the yards.”

“…Always known me too well,” Torber conceded, ravenous. He ripped into the bag and fished out the bag fries while he set out the burger. He refrained from elaborating that much of his time in the yards in the past months had been searching tirelessly for Galen. Through a mouthful of pickle and onion and deliberate calm, “But really, man. How y’been holdin’ up? What _happened_ t’you?”

He could hear Galen digging around in the doorless cabinets above the counter, could see his silhouette, but had less than a clue what his brother was digging for. The crinkle of packaging. The sound of plastic jugs getting pushed around. He hated that the veil of darkness lent so much to his imagination.

“Been better.”

Torber could hear him open a bottle and take a drink, and the faint smell he picked up left him thinking Galen was drinking.

“Forgive me f’eatin’. Ss, stomach’s been gnawin’ bad at me all sss, slaggin’ day.”

« _Oh god._ » “S–” Torber cleared his throat and washed down his food with the soda, to break through his voice cracking. “It’s only fair we both eat.” A weak offering, as he wasn’t even sure how–or whether–to quash Galen’s apologizing for eating. “Y’sure y’don’t want any?” He held up his cup.

The sound of Galen swallowing in the dark was the only response he got for a moment.

“…Positive.”

Cardboard packaging tore, and something rattled, then Torber saw Galen clap a hand over his mouth as to swallow pills. Galen slouched at the counter with a heavy sigh.

“…Y’still eatin’ junk, yeah,” Torber fielded, shakily grabbing for a few fries.

“…Ss, s’all I eat now.”

The elder distilled inside himself before he could no longer stand not asking.

“Wh– whatcha over there eatin’? There’s two chairs over here…”

“Don’t ask. Y’still eatin’.” A long, uncomfortable silence, wherein both were too hungry to keep themselves from tearing into their respective meals at opposite ends of the space. “…Got somethin’ for ya.” Without waiting for a response, Galen walked over to the table, his heavy boot-clad steps reverberating through the cement floor space. “S’a sorta lemonade-from-lemons kinduva thing, how I happened on it, but.”

He removed his right glove and slipped it into his back pocket and took a seat, then made a gesture like a tired, washed up magician demonstrating to the awestruck child that with a bare arm he could not possibly have anything up his sleeve. As he ran his hand along the tabletop, his features tightened in concentration, and a residue began to accumulate. The smear offered a weak reflection. Utter entrancement rapidly replaced all Torber’s fears in that moment, and he leaned in to stare, his hand hovering holding fries that couldn’t quite find his mouth.

“Nonmetal, I burn off. Gut chews it all up. Metal, though? …I _sweat_ metal now.” Galen lingered on how he’d learned the next part, heart heavy from the past few months. “My body’s streamlined t’ingest metals. Everything I eat’t ain’t a metal, it’s there t’make my stomach able to, well, able t’stomach it.”

The toxic nostalgia shuddered out of him and he concentrated on his demonstration, holding his hand slightly off the tabletop. Slowly he drew it further and further away as he gestured mystically, letting the excretion build up alongside the cathartic adrenaline-dread that invoked it flow out of him. A solid but irregularly shaped block of metal took form beneath his palm. When Galen withdrew his hand, Torber could out a faint outline of what looked like some kind of crystal formation.

“Been tryin’ t’experiment with bein’ more creative with it, maybe get t’where I can pass it off as art.” Galen broke the now hardened creation from the table with a flat snap and set it before his brother. A sulfurous, salty musk wafted over along with it. “A solid hunk of pure copper, Torb. S’worth somethin’, right? I can provide for us again.”

A fry fell from Torber’s mouth. Stupefied, he could only gawk at the gift before him. That hunk of metal had to represent easily twenty creds on its own, to the right buyer. Even more, if the receiving end was impressed by a pleasing presentation. It certainly explained why his brother was casually wearing gloves, at least. He’d always had an issue with sweaty palms. Yet, to be able to do these things–at what cost to his health? Really, the undertaking Galen was implying wasn’t all that far off from what stalkers risked on a daily basis diving in the yards–just flashier, more freakish. Was his brother even human anymore? He noticed the ghoul picking the vestige-smears off the table and eating the resultant flakes, and stared absently. Galen stopped when he noticed he was being stared at, and glanced up to give him a smile jammed with self-consciousness.

“Th– that was disgusting, yeah? That, th– that just came outta my body not two minutes ago, an’ I just, just, j– ate it?” He laughed weakly, wincing into his tics. He’d never given it a second thought before. But then again, he didn’t really eat in front of people like this. Had he really grown so accustomed to his condition, that the lines had been blurred between edible and already-eaten? “Ugh.”

“–Gale.” Torber stood and came over to sit next to him on the edge of the card table. Some deep-seated dread within him still couldn’t shake that this figure which had beckoned him might simply be a mock echo of his brother. The duality beguiled him. “Y’ain’t disgusting–”

“–Y’ain’t seen how I get.” The ghoul grabbed Torber’s hand and in the dimness guided a few fingers to feel his features as he spoke of them. “Buncha teeth’ve fell out. My right eye’s all slagged up. Not t’mention how bad my skin’s crackin’ apart…” He got really quiet and held Torber’s hand to his crusty, pale chest, letting go for Torber to linger there himself to mull over an apparent lack of heartbeat. “…Y’should probably wipe off y’hand. Not sure what it’d even do t’human skin.”

Torber stifled his skincrawling fear best he could of not knowing what coated his fingers, and he calmly reached behind him for a napkin and wiped it off. Sweat, saliva… Close up, he could tell now that rotten smell _had_ been Galen. Yet… He began to build a little nerve. It had been difficult to separate the demonstrative gesture of having had his fingers drawn into Galen’s mouth as anything but intimate. He had to tell him now. He had to. Galen was miserable, and Torber knew this was more than him needing Galen. They needed _each other_.

He grabbed a fistful of the collar of Galen’s threadbare, stained tank, and dragged him closer. Mere inches apart, urgency thickened his terror.

“I have always felt close as hell t’you, man. This don’t change a thing. Y’not dead t’me. Y’just…” a jolt shot through him, recalling the clammy, tepid feel of Galen’s pulseless chest, “dead. Y’not disgusting. Y’not a monster. An’ y’certainly not _ugly_.”

Completely disregarding the possibility the saliva was dangerous, he pressed his lips forcefully to Galen’s; electricity in the act throttled him past the overwhelming taste and smell of soap. Galen melted into shock and confusion, brows knitted ever so slightly as he tried to make sense of it, and both their eyes drifted shut. Torber was first to break away, self-consciousness setting in without warning. He looked Galen in the eye again and stroked the scruffy back of his head firmly, reassuringly, with his free hand.

“Y’beautiful, ‘Lena. Always thought y’was beautiful.”

 _Beautiful_. He could stomach it all until that word. Then the appellation swung a right hook to his head. Galen shoved his brother off of him, clicking back into reality with the cognizance _who’d_ just kissed him. How had he gotten so lost in such a simple act of intimacy that even for a fraction he’d forgotten the other participant was a guy, was his brother? Was he really this touch-starved? The ghoul rose and backed off to pace a bit, clenching his hands in his scrawny undercut.

“Y, y’gay, Torber? Y’like guys? …Y’like _ME_?”

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

Standing, Torber approached Galen while still giving him space.

“I… know it’s weird. But y’deserve t’know how deep I feel f’ya. Don’t expect y’ta feel the same.”

Galen slumped down on the bare mattress off a ways in the floor, facing away from him half-fetal. Nothing made sense.

“Then what _did_ y’expect?”

“I, I don’t know. I just… I miss you. I don’t wanna… I can’t lose y’again…” Torber looked at the silhouette of the bed in the dim light, trailing off at realizing how much of a stressor his last remark must have been. “–Chouaaaay that’s a big mattress, man. Don’t think I ever seen one that big.”

Galen turned to glance up at him over the shoulder, dully, anxiously welcoming the change of subject. His brain was a clump of wet yarn, being put on the spot to sort all this out.

“It is pretty big, yeah? Think it’s a queen. Found it in the back end of the lot. Same with lotta the other junk I dragged up in here.”

Torber laid down next to him, and put a hand to his shoulder.

“I lost a lotta sleep while you was gone.”

« _Me, too._ » Galen bristled at how short the reprieve had been, but still welcomed it somehow, relinquishing the wheel to his older brother for what was otherwise too much for him to process. “It’s… hard gettin’ used t’havin’ an empty bed when y’shared one with a sibling all y’life, yeah?” He pushed himself into Torber’s contours, and took his arm around him. “…It don’t bother me y’gay, ‘Nite.”

“Didn’t think it would.” Torber calmly stroked his brother’s stiff, stringy hair, and drifted into thought. “…I ain’t dreamin’ this, yeah?” The words got a little stuck in his throat. “…I… don’t know what y’are anymore… ‘At’s okay, though.”

A weak chuckle trickled out of Galen as he leaned his scalp into Torber’s hand.

“Yeah. Folks don’t usually eat a pack a batteries, n’chase it with detergent. Let alone that thing with the metals…”

“This is kinda cool.” Torber smiled, nestling his face against Galen’s neck. “Y’know, Orpi an’ Ruti would think it was real cool, in a gross kinda way.”

“Vana’d probably scream she’d wanna puke just t’voice how cool-gross it was.” Isolation bristled him into a depressed stupor. “…Just shut up and hold me.”

The demand was met, the two pressed tightly together on the mattress. Torber just couldn’t stay quiet, though, and Galen knotted up all over again the instant he started back up.

“Y’oughtta come back… I’m positive they’d get it. Imagine y’usually under that hoodie, any rate.” Torber sighed, oblivious as he overstepped Galen’s bubble by letting his fingers wander from Galen’s hair to gently running a knuckle along the scarring of the ghoul’s cheek. “…Please…”

“I told ya. Y’ain’t seen how I get. Nobody _gets_ how I get. How I am now ain’t nothin’ compared to _that_.”

“I don’t blame ya for what happened on ‘Piphany.”

Galen pulled away and deadweighted into the mattress with a huff, crossing his arms tightly against his chest.

“…I get too heavy t’even move.” It was an ordeal to spare his brother every imagery he could, but the impulse to be as candid with Torber as he’d been with him been lit a fire in Galen, and he did his best. The thoughts were fumbling, and the words did an even greater disservice to the condition they were meant to describe. “…I swell up real bad…”

Suddenly, Torber understood it wasn’t so much a mental state Galen described as a physical one, and he sat up, increasingly concerned. He couldn’t even wrap his head around the description he’d just been fed.

“Wh. How d’ya take care of y’self when y’like that?”

“I sleep it off.”

“What if somebody came across you? Can y’defend yourself?” Contrary to his composure, his voice continued to build in concern and volume. “What if y’other eye gives out? You’d be blind!” Torber grabbed him and shoved him backwards supine on the mattress, and forced him to look him in the eye with his good eye. “Please come home. We can take care of ya.”

“Y’don’t get it! Y’can’t take care of me! An’ y’might be able t’find some kind of attraction in how I am right now, but y’really would puke if y’saw what this hunger turns me into!”

Wet eyes reflected in the dark over Galen, and a drip fell on his chest.

“I don’t believe you.

Galen shoved Torber off him and leapt to fly to the cabinets. As he scrambled for something, everything got knocked over. Desperation overcame him. He had to snuff this pleading once and for all.

This wasn’t what he wanted from this encounter, not at all.

“I was hopin’ I wouldn’t hafta dip into this f’a long time, an’ this definitely ain’t what I kept it for.” The ghoul held it up, and the angular surfaces of the amber glass glistened. “I found it in an abandoned medical buildin’. Liquid mercury. Got some other metals in it, but it’s near pure. ‘Bout fifteen pounds worth. …Didn’t get like this eatin’ slaggin’ _batteries_. Y’wanna see how slagged I get? How slagged I _really get_? Don’t get much worse n’it does with mercury. It’s _already_ liquid. Cuts right through me. Don’t even hardly digest it first.”

Torber shot up on the bed, frantic to grasp what was transpiring in the near-darkness.

“–Gale, don’t. Y’don’t gotta prove a thing t’me. Y’don’t gotta–” The elder cut off when he heard the cork pop out, and he saw the bottle go to his brother’s lips. “Gale–” He reached out vainly in horror, forced to watch having driven his brother to poison himself.

For how heavy the bottle had been, it only took about three solid chugs for Galen to drain the bottle dry. The liquid saturated every surface, every tissue, that it touched. Within seconds the tics and tremors began. The bottle fell from his hands, glass shattering the uncomfortable silence. The stuff sank right to the bottom of his gut. Breathing heavy, he took labored, deliberate steps toward Torber. His motor skills were rapidly deteriorating, but if he put enough thought into each step…

Torber scrambled back, convinced that breaking the bottle had been anything but accidental, and he scrambled to his feet. Galen pursued, though slowly.

Out into the empty air. Good. Torber would see better that way.

Galen could already tell the bloating had begun, his neck tight.

“This what, hat–t–t– a din, dinky lil’ bott, bottl’ll, lll, do do to me. An’ my hunger can, can drive me. Drive me t’eat _hundreds a pounds_ this shit, hit, it. _IT_.” He evened his stance, as steady as he could get, and glared at Torber.

The edemic masses blistered up around his thyroid, clustered tight flushed a deep bruised purple, marred with wiry dark veins. As each swelled to a certain size, they fell translucent, the orange of the low sodium lights granting an even more disturbing appearance to his liquefying necrosis. His skin wept quicksilver.

“ _LOOK AT ME!_ ”

His mouth had swelled in much the similar fashion, his gums and tongue having absorbed more than enough to spur a reaction just from the contact of the act of ingestion, and he curled his lips to bare his bloating gumline and shifting teeth.

“T, t, tell ‘e I ain’t ugly. T, t, t, t, t– this gh’retty. ‘T, tractive. _YEAU’IFUL_.”

The inarticulate, distended words held just as much venom as the bottled Galen had just inhaled. Drool poured uselessly from the corners of his mouth as fluid retention tightened his mucous membranes. When Torber stumbled on a rock and cried out, Galen screeched at him, a horrid, rasping, pleural, metal-rending sound, as his entire body reverberated its contents. Torber fell back against the chain link fence, and tangled up the fingers of one hand up in the wire lattice behind him, to shield himself with the other. He tried in vain to hold back tears as his terror kicked his legs in the mud with his utility boots, unable to gain traction.

“It’nhhh think tho. –Get out.”

Torber couldn’t stand fast enough to satisfy Galen. The creature’s spasms and twitches only magnified his mercurial anguish.

“ _GET! OUT!_ ”

As Torber finally managed to scramble up the fence to escape, Galen watched him sprint. His brother looked back, just once. _To make sure he hadn’t been chased._

« _Little shit, y’better run._ »

Galen didn’t stand there long. He shambled back into the shadows as his condition deteriorated further. If he’d had his faculties, he would have likened the gaps in his mental processes to Swiss cheese. He slumped himself into the calming, chill frame of the bathtub. A long, gurgling sigh sprung from him as the swelling started squeezing his breath from him. The entire place was trashed, and he was soon to be just as bad off. He could smell the bits of food Torber had been interrupted from finishing off, and the characteristic smell of the copper which he’d sweat-sculpted for him.

“ _Get… ow… wwww…_ ” he whispered to himself again, suddenly too upset to hold it back any longer, hands to his tumescent throat as his lungs wheezed shut.

A few weeks later, Galen started out from the construction site to satisfy a craving which he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but which he knew the site could not remedy. A box sat just inside the fence at the gate which surrounded the complex. He approached it and brought it back inside. Crouching over the mattress, he opened the box to find a cake. Well, what resembled a cake, anyway. He almost made a face at someone having given him real food, but his sense of smell told him otherwise. On an impulse he stuck a bare finger in it, to find it wasn’t icing, _or_ cake. His fingertip stopped just half an inch down. He smelled his finger, and his head fell to one side as he stuck it in his mouth to suck it clean.

“Caulk.”

He smeared a little of the half-cured caulk away to determine what it had covered, exposing a styrofoam block. The bizarre craft project had a single candle planted atop it, and was sprinkled wish nuts and washers. He pulled the card from where it had been taped to the inside of the box lid. Upon reading it, he couldn’t stop the drool from running, and fell sniveling fiercely from his crouch onto his butt.

|| _I didn’t forget. Miss you_.||


End file.
